BV 



1655 
.IH 



! s 










Book iSJA 



Copyright^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

CHURCH HOUSE TEXTS 
AND TALKS 






By 



REV. FRANK H? DECKER 

Author of 
"Christ's Experience of God 9 * 




THE PILGRIM PRESS 

14 Beacon Street 19 W. Jackson Street 

BOSTON CHICAGO 






COPYRIOHT 1917 

By FRANK H. DECKER 



IAY 16 1317 



THE PILGRIM PRESS 
BOSTON 

/ 

i 
©CLA460858 



TO THE FRIENDS WHOSE UNFAILING SYMPATHY AND HELP 

HAVE MADE POSSIBLE THE BLESSED YEARS OF 

CHURCH HOUSE MINISTRY AND TO 

ALL MEN AND WOMEN 

WHO HAVE BEEN 

SAVED BY THE TRUTHS 

HERE TAUGHT 

THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 

BY THE AUTHOR 



PREFACE 

This volume is given to the public in 
answer to the request received from many 
quarters for an account of the remarkable 
work of the author at the Church House. 
The first ten chapters are essentially accu- 
rate reports of typical interviews between 
Mr. Decker and those whom he seeks to 
help. They show how one man deals per- 
sonally with the victims of drink, the thief, 
the fallen woman, and others in moral 
trouble. 

The remainder of the volume contains 
forty-two very brief addresses, such as Mr. 
Decker makes in his rescue mission. Many 
readers will be especially interested in this 
illustration of evangelistic zeal on the part 
of one who is "progressive" in theology 
and in the fact that his theology is, by 
demonstration, worthy of the title chosen 
for this volume, i i Truths That Save. ' ' 

Parris T. Farwell. 



vii 



CONTENTS 



INTERVIEWS 

PAGE 

I. A Typical Interview 1 
II. Saved through Love for Each 

Other and Their Children 7 

III. Saved by Love-Inspired Hope 9 

IV. Talk to a Thief 11 
V. Where She Found God 13 

VI. Believing without Understanding 15 

VII. Valued because Valuable 18 

VIII. Saved through Love for a Mother 19 

IX. Is My Dead Father Still Alive? 22 

X. "The Truth Shall Make You Free" 27 



IN THE CHAPEL 



I. 


Truths That Save 


37 


II. 


Tempted by a Hungry Heart 


56 


III. 


Vision and Volition 


61 


IV. 


A Drunken Husband 


63 


V. 


Out of Tune 


64 


VI. 


Two Motives 


67 


VII. 


Protect Your Motive 


69 


VIII. 


Motive Misinterpreted 


70 


IX. 


"Now Ye Are Clean" 


74 


X. 


For Their Sakes I Sanctify My- 
self That They May Be Sanc- 






tified THROUGH THE TRUTH 


77 


XI. 


Asking, Seeking, Knocking 


82 


XII. 


A Wretched Man 


85 


XIII. 


The Saving Touch 


87 



CONTENTS 

PAGH 

XIV. Fields White foe the Harvest 89 

XV. Wells without Water 91 
XVI. How Three Thousand Men Were 

Saved 94 

XVII. The Supreme Test of Love 96 

XVIII. Garments Spotted by the Flesh 100 

XIX. Cleansed by a Word 102 

XX. Get Right with Men First 104 

XXI. Watch Your Thoughts 107 

XXII. Barabbas or Jesus? 109 

XXIII. Saved from Within 112 

XXIV. Christ's Prayer for Peter 115 
XXV. Fatal Ignorance 118 

XXVI. The Effect of a Look 120 

XXVII. A New Golden Rule 122 

XXVIII. Why Prayer Is Necessary 124 

XXIX. The Hour of God's Opportunity 127 

XXX. Peter Misrepresenting Jesus 129 

XXXI. Misdirected Zeal 136 

XXXII. The Devils in the Swine 139 

XXXIII. The Penalty a Man Pays fob 

Blindness to His Faults 144 

XXXIV. Rooted and Grounded in Love 147 
XXXV. What Do Ye More Than Others? 149 

XXXVI. The Mote and the Beam 152 

XXXVII. Their Works Do Follow Them 155 

XXXVIII. Our Faults Our Burdens 157 

XXXIX. Helpful Memories 159 

XL. Faith in God Triumphant Over 

Every Possible Difficulty 162 

XLI. Let God Be True 168 
XLII. Unto Thy Hands I Commit My 

Spirit 169 



INTERVIEWS 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 



A TYPICAL INTEEVIEW 

She was sent to me by one of our lead- 
ing physicians. Her mother's heart was 
broken, for her beautiful daughter's life 
seemed wrecked beyond all hope of repair, 
and she was still under the spell of the 
married man, the father of her dead infant 
child. The mother's efforts to get her 
daughter to tell her the truth had failed. 
When the child came to me I made a direct 
appeal to the Spirit of God in her heart. 
"He," I said, "tried to hold you back 
from your sin, didn't He? He sought to 
stop you after you had taken the first step, 
didn't He? And just now He wants you 
to give your life to Him for cleansing and 
regeneration, doesn't He? It would have 
been better if you had obeyed the voice of 
God in your mind. You would have es- 
caped all this sin and shame if you had 
done so, and it would have been better for 
your poor, dear mother and father if you 
had listened to God." "0 yes," she said, 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

"it would have been infinitely better if I 
had listened.'' "Well, He wants to save 
you and them from further wretchedness, 
for the future will be like the past, only 
worse, if you keep on the same path, don't 
you see that? And not only for you but for 
him whom you say you love. You owe it 
to him and to his wife and children to put 
an end to this thing. Write to him that 
you have given your life to God for par- 
don." And she did. 

On our knees we sought the consecrating 
experience of God which she so desperately 
needed. As she left me I said, "Here are 
the sweetest words in the world for you. 
Listen! i There is, therefore, now no con- 
demnation to those who walk according to 
the Spirit of God' — no condemnation of 
God or man or yourself. You have a fresh, 
new, white life from the Spirit of God and 
you will feel that you have it from this very 
moment." And my words proved true. 
On her mother's bosom she wept her tears 
of joyful repentance, and from her 
mother's lips received the assurance of a 
full reconciliation. 

And then I sent for the man in the case. 
With a heart full of fear of the conse- 
quences of his sin, he came. My attitude 
toward him was one of deep compassion, 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

not contempt, but compassion. I knew that 
he was old enough to have known better, 
and that his training in Sunday school and 
church should have kept him from so sin- 
ning against a dear young life, but I knew 
also that he had been overtaken by a fault 
into which men unintentionally fall as the 
result of circumstances such as had ex- 
posed him to temptation. 

I ventured to tell him the secrets of his 
soul — how the Spirit of God had struggled 
with him in the hour of his temptation and 
how surely he would have been saved from 
falling if he had listened to that still, small 
voice. "But," I said, "you were not on 
the rock foundation, by which I mean you 
did not have the interests of others, your 
wife and children, the girl and her parents, 
at heart, or you thought you could sin and 
not involve them in suffering. You did not 
fully realize that the relationship of hus- 
band and wife is the one that admits of no 
third person. There are other relation- 
ships of friendship that husband and wife 
may have, but the husband cannot share a 
love for his wife with another. We 
preachers make a mistake when we say 
that the more of love a man gives away the 
more of love he has left. The story of the 
widow's cruse of oil is not true either in 



TEUTHS THAT SAVE 

its literal or spiritual significance, for no 
one can fill an empty vessel from another 
vessel without finding that he has just so 
much less of oil in the one vessel as he has 
poured into the other. It is true that love 
for one's wife and friends grows as it is 
put into expression of word and deed, but 
it is also true that one has only a capacity 
for loving one woman in the relationship 
of wife — only one, I say. If he attempts 
to share the heart place of his wife with 
another, he will find that the relationship 
is killed. Your love for the second woman 
made you long to be free from your rela- 
tionship with your wife. It made your 
whole life a lie, didn't it? I want you to 
see this thing as it is, for I know that if 
you see the truth concerning it, the truth 
will make you free from temptation to re- 
turn to it." "I do see it," he said, "see 
it as I never saw it before." And then we 
prayed for him that he, too, might feel that 
he was cleansed from his sin and that he 
might claim the gracious assurance of free- 
dom from temptation. i i There is one thing 
more that you should do. Give me the 
money to pay the expense incurred by the 
poor girl because of your sin." And he is 
doing so as fast as he can. 
I thought I had done with this case, 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

when my visit to the home of the girl 
told me of the girl's unhappy state be- 
cause of her father's attitude toward 
the man who had wronged her. Her 
father's heart was filled with the spirit 
of murder. And so I sent for the 
father and this is what I said to him : " No 
one but God can enable you to pardon the 
man, and He cannot do so except as you 
see his sin in its true light. The truth con- 
cerning that sin will set you free from your 
hatred of the sinner. I know what you say, 
that for two years he has kept you and your 
wife in a hell of anxiety and pain and that 
it seems to you that every thought of him 
must fill your heart with fresh hate, but it 
need not be so. There is a way of escape 
from the terrible state of mind in which 
you are held captive. It is through the 
door of forgiveness for the man's sin. 
Your daughter has forgiven him, and your 
wife has done the same. Here are some 
thoughts that will help you to follow their 
example. First, you have been forgiven 
much, how much I do not know, neither do 
you. Go back in your life to your earliest 
recollection of boyhood and count up all 
the sins that you committed by which in- 
nocent hearts have suffered. Don't flinch 
from the full record as it begins to appear, 

5 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

made evident by your memory, for it will 
help you mightily to forgive, to remember 
how much you have been forgiven, both by 
God and by those against whom you have 
sinned. And then consider the wrong you 
are now doing your innocent wife and your 
repentant child by your refusal to take 
them out of the tension of your hateful 
spirit." 

"But he ought to suffer," he said. 

"He has suffered and is now suffering 
beyond words to tell. His sin is ever be- 
fore him. But for the help of God he would 
want to end his life. And then, lastly, you 
should be merciful toward the man because 
he was overcome by a sin into which men 
easily drift. Poor fellow! He went too 
near the rapids and was carried over. One 
more word. Your daughter has a fresh, 
new life in God in which all the stain of 
her sin has been washed away. She is as 
pure as though she had never sinned. She 
feels that she is, and you and all others 
coming in contact with her will feel the 
same." 

And then we prayed that the Spirit of 
the eternal God might make it possible for 
the father to forgive the sin of the man 
who had wronged his daughter. 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

II 

SAVED THROUGH LOVE FOR EACH 
OTHER AND THEIR CHILDREN 

"You w&nt work and a place to board 
till you get on your feet again? Is that all 
you want?" I asked. "If so, I have no in- 
terest in securing either for you, since if 
you continue in this habitual drinking, you 
will queer the job in a little while, and the 
money you earn will go for the most part 
to support the accursed saloon. Before 
we talk about getting you a job, or furnish- 
ing you a place to live, let's talk about the 
thing that has made you come to me, down 
and out — the thing that is back of all your 
trouble. 

"It is not the drink, but hard luck? But 
you drink some, don't you? Yes, I thought 
so. Well, don't be afraid to look into your 
soul and see the truth. Have you courage 
enough to do that? It takes a very brave 
man to do it. Can you look into your mind 
and not dodge the truth that is waiting to 
look you in the face there ? It will help you 
to do so to know that I don't want to corner 
you up about your drinking except for the 
one reason — that I want to help you to es- 
cape from continuing in it. 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

"Now, tell me, where would you be if you 
had never touched a drop of drink, and 
where would your wife and children be? 
You would not be here, and they would not 
be in another city, dependent upon charity 
for the bread which you should have fur- 
nished them. 

"Wake up and think about this thing. 
You are mentally asleep, and God cannot 
save a man in that condition. Can you be 
saved from the power of drink? Certainly, 
and at once. If you do what I tell you now, 
you will conquer it from this hour. If I 
were to put water in a boiler and keep a 
fire burning under it, the water would gen- 
erate steam that properly applied would 
make the machinery go. You can under- 
stand that, can't you? Well, then, you 
ought to be able to understand my meaning 
when I tell you that if I fill your mind with 
certain thoughts and you meditate upon 
them, they will generate in your mind a 
power that will strengthen your will, so 
that you can go by the saloon with all of 
its frightful temptations. Let me put the 
water in the boiler, and you keep the fire 
of meditation burning until the steam is 
generating, and the thing will be done." 

And then I made him see and feel his sin 
of drinking at the expense of breaking up 

8 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

his family, with the fearful results to his 
wife and children. Six years ago he was 
saved, but his wife was not. After they 
were brought together she continued drink- 
ing. Her will power seemed utterly in- 
sufficient to conquer the drink habit. But 
a talk in which I made her realize what 
the results of her drinking would mean if 
it continued brought to her such hate and 
fear of the evil that she has never touched 
the drink since. Only the other night she 
said to me, "I would die before I would 
touch it again. " Now they have a happy 
home and their children have a chance. 



Ill 
SAVED BY LOVE-INSPIRED HOPE 

She came from the district court, where 
she had often been before, and her appear- 
ance indicated her wretched bondage to 
drink and another evil. Like the woman of 
the text she had been taken in the act, for 
which the penalty was imprisonment; but 
the court had put her on probation and sent 
her to me that she might have another 
chance. 

"Will you think a little of what I want 
to say to you, for I can tell you something 

9 



TEUTHS THAT SAVE 

that will do you a lot of good. See this 
handkerchief. It was soiled and blood- 
stained, but it is not so now, is it? It is 
just as clean as if it had never been soiled. 
So it can be with you. You can be as pure 
as you were before you fell, so that you 
will feel so, and others who are pure will 
feel that you are pure. Don't mind what 
they tell you about the bird with the broken 
wing. That story is absolutely false in 
every respect; for the broken wing, after 
it is mended, is strongest in that exact place 
where it was broken, and the same is true 
of the broken will, the broken motive, the 
broken word, the broken character. You 
can get back all you have lost, of light out 
of your conscience, of love out of your 
heart, of power out of your will. God never 
lets any of His children get so far away 
that He can't bring them home. He never 
lets any one of them so damage himself 
that he can't be made perfectly whole. He 
never allows one so to pollute himself that 
he can't be made whiter than snow. 
Wouldn't you like to walk the streets of 
Providence, a first-class Christian lady, 
with self-respect, and compelling the re- 
spect of those who now look down upon 
you? Well, you can be such a lady and I 
will show you how." 

10 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

And she put herself in my care, that I 
might make good my promise to her. Her 
motive is converted and therefore she is 
approved of God. She is now a wife, and 
the perfecting work of God's grace is going 
on in her life. 



IV 

TALK TO A THIEF 

"I want to make you feel that you don't 
want to steal — because it is folly to steal, 
not because your recent experience in jail 
makes you feel that if you steal again you 
will be found out and sent back there again. 
But you were foolish, misguided. You 
wanted to get something for nothing — 
something that belonged to another because 
he had earned it. You robbed another man 
of the fruit of his toil. It took him weeks 
of hard and patient labor to earn what you 
took from him without giving him anything 
in return. This was your fatal mistake, — 
you thought you could get as much out of 
a stolen dollar as out of one that had been 
properly earned, but you found out that 
you were mistaken. You had mighty little 
satisfaction in spending the stolen money, 
most of which went for drink. 

11 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

"It is how a man gets a thing that decides 
what he will get out of it. If he gains it 
honestly, as the result of proper toil, he 
will so use it as to get something valuable 
out of it. I want you to see this so that 
you shall not be again tempted to think that 
the dollar stolen is just the same as the 
dollar earned. That is the fatal mistake 
of the thief. Nothing that a man gets, for 
winch he gives no return, is of any possible 
value to him. 

"How much does the idle rich man get 
out of his inherited money which he spends 
selfishly, without thought of enriching 
those to whom it goes? I tell you he 
doesn't get as much pleasure and profit out 
of a million dollars as an honest producer 
gets out of a week's wage. Next time you 
are tempted to steal, I want you to remem- 
ber that I told you that you couldn't get 
anything out of whatever is gained in that 
way. Think of how much more you have 
robbed from yourself than you robbed from 
others. You stole a few dollars, and as the 
result you have forfeited your name as an 
honest man and are branded as a thief. 

"If now you are to have a chance to earn 
an honest dollar, it must be because some 
of us believe that you now intend to live an 
honest life. Don't forget that a single act 

12 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

of dishonesty makes one a dishonest man, 
and no one wants to trust or employ a 
man known to be dishonest. It seems to 
m,e that I have told you the one thing that 
will protect you from yielding to tempta- 
tion to steal again, that you will not yield 
to the temptation as you formerly yielded 
to it, now that you know that you can't pos- 
sibly get anything in that way which is 
worth while. I think you will choose to 
earn every dollar hereafter, that you may 
have enjoyment in earning it and enjoy- 
ment in spending it, as you realize that 
both in earning and spending you are 
rendering a valuable service to those 
around you." 



WHERE SHE FOUND GOD 

"God is up in heaven and He doesn't 
care for anybody but Himself, but you are 
right here where I can get at you, and you 
are willing to help poor people like me, and 
so I have come to you." These are the 
words of an Italian woman who came to 
me recently. She was up to her eyes in 
trouble. She had had fifteen children, 
seven of whom had died, and she was living 

13 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

with the eight and her husband, trying to 
keep soul and body together out of his 
earnings of $8.00 per week. When she 
came to me she was about to be put in 
jail because of her inability to pay damages 
in a suit for slander which she had per- 
mitted to go against her by default. Alto- 
gether, her case was maddening and I did 
not wonder that she thought God was up 
in heaven and cared for nobody but Him- 
self, and that He was so far away and so 
indifferent to her welfare that she had no 
hope whatever of any help from Him. 
Multitudes who would not use her words, 
who are shocked at them as they read them 
here, nevertheless feel toward God about 
as she did, only they praise Him with their 
lips while they disbelieve in Him in their 
hearts. 

After I had saved this woman from go- 
ing to jail and helped her in other material 
ways, I said to her, " There is a reservoir 
of water up on the east side and it is all 
fenced in so that no one can get at it. It 
seems to care for nothing but itself, but in 
your house there is a faucet to which you 
can go at any time and get the water you 
need. You praise the faucet, and condemn 
the reservoir! You thank the faucet, but 
have no gratitude for the reservoir, until 

14 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

you find out that very drop of water that 
has come through the faucet came from the 
reservoir. When you find this out, you say, 
'I am thankful to both faucet and reservoir, 
to the reservoir for sending the water, and 
to the faucet for giving it to me.' " "Oh," 
she said, "I know what you mean. I 
thought of it last night when I was going 
home. You mean you are the faucet and 
God is the reservoir; that He puts it into 
your heart to help me." "Yes," I said, 
"thank God you have come to understand 
the exact truth, and now you will be thank- 
ful, not so much to me as to God, who 
through me has granted you a little of the 
more abundant help that He longs to give. 
And remember this — that others should 
find the spirit of God in you, as you say 
you have found His spirit in me. For 
God's spirit is in you and in all men." 



VI 

BELIEVING WITHOUT UNDER- 
STANDING 

God's greatness affects the mind much 
as the sun at noon-day affects the naked 
eye. If a seed, knowing its dependence 
upon the sun, should say, "The sun is so 

15 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

far away that I may not get to it or if I 
could approach it its greatness would 
wither me in an instant," the seed would 
need to be told that the spirit of the sun is 
all that it requires for its development and 
that that spirit is just where the seed is 
within the seed itself. So you will find in 
God's Spirit all that you need of God, all 
that you have of capacity for His wisdom 
and truth and love. An attempt to mea- 
sure His greatness will not help you. 
Neither will any mental effort on your part 
profit you if you attempt to understand a 
Being without beginning of days or limita- 
tions of life. What you need is simply to 
recognize the presence of God's Spirit in 
your own soul and in the souls of others. 
God knows how much you need of Him, 
and He has so given Himself to you in His 
spirit that you are not blinded by His 
light, or deafened by His still small voice. 

"But," a young University man said 
to me, "I want to know who made God, 
whose Spirit you say is in me. Where did 
He come from? Unless you can answer 
that question, I shall not believe that He 
is here." 

"You will not believe that He is here," 
I replied, "unless you can understand how 
He got here? You do not talk that way 

16 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

about other things you know are here, 
whose origin you cannot for a moment ex- 
plain. How did the material world get 
here? Go back as fast and as far as you 
can, until you reach the final atom, or 
molecule, or force, and then account for 
that. Or, if you go back of the force to 
mind, you have simply gone around the 
circle and are just where you started when 
you set out to find out how the world got 
here. You do not know how it got here, 
but you know it is here. And so with your 
own personal existence. Leaving out God, 
how do you account for that? If you say 
you will not believe that you are here until 
you understand how you got here, you will 
never believe that you are here; but you 
are here, and the world is here and God 
is here. Do not bother your mind with 
further questions as to who made God, but 
simply recognize His presence and take 
advantage of His fellowship, through 
which you may be transformed into His 
image, and as your capacity for Him in- 
creases, many things that you cannot now 
hope to understand will be made plain.' ' 



17 



TEUTHS THAT SAVE 

VII 

VALUED BECAUSE VALUABLE 

"No," I said to him, "men will not take 
a nickel for a quarter, or a quarter for a 
dollar. They will not take lead for brass, 
or brass for silver, or silver for gold. The 
counterfeit is soon discovered and rejected 
and the counterfeiter does not long escape 
detection and punishment. If you are to 
be valued for any length of time you w T ill 
have to make yourself valuable. You don't 
seem to have understood this, since you 
have never been able to induce your em- 
ployer to value your service sufficiently to 
wish to retain you in his employ. Oh, yes, 
I know your excuse, that you have never 
been appreciated, that you have never had 
a fair chance. I have made some inquiries 
of your employers and have learned that 
what I suspected is the truth. "While you 
did some good work at times, you cheap- 
ened yourself by certain things which I 
want to point out. No, don't be angry, 
don't go, for I am your friend, having your 
interests at heart. I want you to see what 
it is that decreases your value, so that you 
may, by correcting it, make yourself of 
such value as you wish to be taken for. 

18 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

I think you will recognize the truth that 
drink and dishonesty and untruthfulness 
and laziness cheapen you, that they take a 
piece of gold and turn it into a piece of 
dirt, and that if you are to be valued, you 
must overcome these things. They can be 
overcome and the first step toward over- 
coming them is in seeing them as they are, 
for when you do that, you will repent of 
them as you must, and gladly substitute 
for them the virtues which they contradict. 
Don't be a piece of lead when you can be a 
piece of gold. Don't make yourself worth- 
less when you can be valuable. Then you 
will be valued because of the valuable ser- 
vice you render. God will help you to over- 
come the things that cheapen you, when 
you see how valueless they are." 



VIII 

SAVED THROUGH LOVE FOR A 
MOTHER 

" You can't make a wrong thing go right 
long; you may say that it is right and 
others may say the same thing, but it will 
not go right long. But you can make a 
wrong thing right, so that it will go right, 

19 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

just the same as though it had never been 
wrong, even though it may have been 
wrong for fifty years. If, therefore, we 
really have your welfare at heart and want 
to get you a right life, we shall do all in 
our power to have you see what is wrong 
in you and correct it. Unless we do that, 
all of our efforts to help you will utterly 
fail, for I tell you again, the Church House 
does not know any way to make any wrong 
thing go right long. 

"Find out what is wrong in you and 
make it right. That is what you would do 
if you were dealing with a clock, or any- 
thing else, but that is the last thing that you 
think of doing with reference to your life. 
Most men who come here are, in the main, 
right, but their lives are rendered valueless 
by some one wrong thing which they over- 
look, or refuse to correct. What is the 
value of a watch of the best materials and 
with mechanism which is all right — except 
one broken spring? Unless that is mended, 
the watch might just as well be thrown 
away. Valuable as you would be but for 
your habitual drinking, that makes you 
absolutely valueless, both to yourself and 
to others with whom you are related. If 
you are not to be rescued from it, you 
might just as well put a millstone round 

20 



TEUTHS THAT SAVE 

your neck and be drowned in the depths of 
the sea. These are words of Christ and 
they seem cruel, but nevertheless, they are 
words of truth, since there is absolutely no 
use in perpetuating and multiplying a 
valueless life, and habitual drunkenness 
renders the most precious life worthless. 

"You want a steady job and don't see 
that an unsteady man can never have a 
steady job. I can give you just such a job 
now, if you could only be depended upon to 
fill it as you could and would but for that 
drink habit. That job would enable you 
to help support that aged and beautiful- 
souled mother across the sea, filling her 
heart with joy instead of pain. 

"But it is no use. She must suffer on 
because you can't be depended upon to let 
go of the drink. You have taken cures in 
your efforts to escape from drink, but 
in vain. There is one thing you haven't 
taken, and that is the reason why you have 
not succeeded in your efforts to overcome 
your habit. You haven't taken a new mo- 
tive, but in each case when you have at- 
tempted to reform, you have acted upon 
the same unchanged motive of selfishness. 
I could change your life if I could change 
your motive. If, for the sake of that 
mother across the sea, you would ask God 

21 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

to fill your heart with His Spirit of love, — 
in. the strength of that motive you would 
have power to escape from the drink evil. 
Try it and see. Fill your mind with 
thoughts of mother and of what it will 
mean if you take the pain out of her heart, 
filling it with joy. Think, I say, and keep 
on thinking until the thought of support- 
ing and comforting your mother gets its 
hold upon you, exercises its influence upon 
you, and then think of what it will mean 
to the men around you if they see you con- 
quer that which is ruining them. ' J 

With such words and others that I can- 
not here report, I made my appeal to this 
man to change his motive. 

"I shall never drink again/ ' he 
said. That was over six years ago, and 
he has kept his word, with the result 
that he has been the joy of his mother, 
whom he has twice visited in her English 
home. 



IX 

IS MY DEAD FATHER STILL ALIVE? 

"Life hasn't been worth much to me 
since father died," a Jewish girl said 
to me recently. "What a cruel thing it 

22 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

was to leave me with a broken heart as my 
father's death has left me!" 

"But your father is not dead," I said. 
"Neither has death so changed him that he 
must needs mean less to you than he meant 
when he was here." 

"I wish I could believe what you say," 
she replied, "but it doesn't seem true. If 
it is true that my father is living, why 
doesn't he come back and make me realize 
his presence? No one ever has come back 
from death. How, then, can we know that 
the dead are still living? What makes you 
think my father is alive?" she asked. 

"Well," I replied, "the belief that death 
does not end all is here and is held by all 
classes of men, educated and uneducated, 
cultured and uncultured, from the wild man 
roaming the plains to the world-famed 
scientist. The Christian believes that one 
man returned to the world after death and 
made himself known to his friends, and 
countless millions have based their faith of 
man's immortality upon the testimony of 
these men that they saw Jesus risen from 
the dead. My faith that the dead are liv- 
ing does not get its support from the story 
of the resurrection of Jesus. It rests upon 
other grounds. I think I have in myself 
the proof of my immortality. I find there 

23 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

a deathless spirit in me, a spirit that does 
not grow old. Of that I am certain, and 
there are things in me that are meaningless 
if I am to pass out of existence at death. 

"If we could enter a shell and speak to 
the bird about to break through into the 
outer world, and tell it of the world so very- 
near and yet so unseen, the bird might not 
be able to credit our teaching concerning 
that near but unseen world. How, then, 
should we be able to convince it of the 
truth of our statements? It seems to me 
that I should call the bird's attention to 
some things in itself that mean the exist- 
ence of a world immediately outside the 
shell. 

"What's the meaning of these wings if 
there is not a world where they can be 
used, and what is the significance of these 
eyes if there isn't light beyond the shell in 
which you are enclosed? And what pos- 
sible use can there ever be for these feet 
if there isn't ground upon which they shall 
stand and walk? 

"The bird would find in itself — in its 
eyes, and its wings, and its feet, conclusive 
proof of the existence of an unseen world, 
without which these parts of itself could 
have no possible meaning. 

" So we find in ourselves capacities, quali- 

24 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

ties that are sufficient proof of the life be- 
yond the grave, since these things are 
meaningless if such a life does not exist. 
That the finest things in our souls are to 
be unfulfilled, that they are begun and 
then denied completion, is an incredible 
thought; it is a denial of the existence of 
God and the rationality of the universe. 

"The more valuable a thing is, the more 
certain we are that it will not be destroyed. 
We cannot have any faith in the endless 
continuance of the worthless, but we feel 
that a thing that is becoming increasingly 
valuable must go on. It is on this ground, 
I am sure, that we base our faith in the 
continuance after death of the life of Jesus 
Christ. Men simply had to believe that 
such a life would not terminate on the 
cross. Our faith in the resurrection of 
Jesus does not rest so much upon the tes- 
timony of those who say they saw him alive 
from the dead as upon the feeling in our 
very souls that a life so rich, so valuable, 
so serviceable, could not possibly be treated 
as worthless. One who believes himself to 
be a son of God will believe that he has 
eternal life, and no one who believes that 
he is being perfected will believe that that 
process will stop short of perfection, and 
certainly no one will credit the idea that 

25 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

when once lie is perfected, he will be de- 
stroyed. The simple truth is that as a man 
enriches his life and makes it increasingly 
worthy of continuance, he will have in his 
soul the feeling of its deathlessness. 

" So fine a spirit, 

Daring yet serene — 

He may not surely lapse from what has been, 

Greater, not less, his wandering mind must be; 

Ampler the splendid vision he must see — 

'Tis unbelievable he fades away — 

An exhalation at the dawn of day. 

Nor dare we dream that he has been returned 

Into the Oversoul, to be discerned 

Hereafter in the bosom of the rose, 

In petals of the lily, or in those 

Far-jewelled sunset 

Skies that glow and pale 

Or in the rich note of the nightingale. 

Nay, tho all beauty may recall to mind 

What we in his fair life were wont to find 

He shall escape absorption, and shall still 

Preserve a faculty to know and will 

From our small limits all witholding, free, 

Somewhere he dwells and keeps high company 

Yet tainted not with so supreme a bliss 

As to forget he knew a world like this." 



26 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 



"THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU 
FREE" 

His wife came with a heart broken with 
grief. Her eyes were full of tears as she 
said: 

"He was a perfect husband until this 
girl came into our home a few weeks ago. 
For many years we had lived in each 
other's love without the slightest sign that 
any one would come between us. Three 
dear children had come, each of them bind- 
ing us closer together, but now he says that 
this other one has taken my place so that 
he cannot longer live with me. I have rea- 
soned with him, urging the interest of our 
children as a supreme reason why he 
should overcome this infatuation. But all 
is in vain. He seems held by a power 
greater than his own, against which his 
will counts for nothing. Is there anything 
you can do to save him and us? His 
mother, brother, and others have done 
their best, but failed." 

"Yes," I replied, "there is something I 
can do that others have not tried. I know 
a way to make your husband free from the 
bondage of evil in which he is held, for the 

27 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

thing that holds him is error, and the thing 
that can free him is truth, and the exact 
truth needed to change his mind I know. I 
will get in touch with him and with the 
girl at the earliest possible moment.' ' 

I sent my visitor for the girl and she 
brought the man with her. I took him first, 
and when we were alone, I said : 

"I want you to know that I have no 
stones to throw at you. I want simply to 
have you see the truth, just the truth, and 
nothing but the truth, concerning this affair 
between you and the woman in the other 
room. I shall do my very best to help you 
to see it. I know that she is younger and 
fairer than your wife and that she seems 
to you infinitely more attractive. But her 
attraction is not moral or spiritual, but 
wholly physical. Nevertheless it is all-pow- 
erful with you. You do not see the truth 
about her and about your wife. Neither 
appears in the right light. I want you to 
know the truth concerning them. The 
truth about the girl is that she is so fear- 
fully selfish that to please herself, not you, 
she has consented for weeks to see your 
wife and mother and others who love you 
suffering the tortures of hell. Their tears 
have not affected her own sinful pleasure. 
She has been willing to gratify her own 

28 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

selfish desire for you at the expense of 
breaking the heart of your faithful wife 
and of leading you to give a damning ex- 
ample to your children. In a word, she 
has not considered their most sacred in- 
terests, but has been ready to consent to 
rob them of all that they have a right 
to find in you. 

"Look at her in the light of the truth 
concerning her and the truth will make 
you free from this mad passion for her. 
And then look at your wife. See the truth 
concerning her. You admit that she has 
been true to her marriage covenant with 
you. Face the facts concerning her moth- 
erhood of your children, and all that it has 
meant of suffering both for her and for 
them. Consider her love revealed in the 
years of her faithful toil for her family. 
You say she has faults of disposition. 
Know the truth as to your responsibility 
for developing these faults. How largely 
are they the result of your cruel neglect 
of her? Know the truth about your own 
faults before you say anything more about 
hers. Take the beam out of your own eye 
before you call attention to what may be 
a mote in her eye. 

"Your mind is changing concerning 
these two women? You are beginning to 

29 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

see them in their right light? They do not 
look to you as they did before we began 
this talk? Well, then, let me tell you a 
little more of the truth that will make 
you free from the power of this sinful 
attraction. 

"She does not love you or she would 
have your welfare at heart. For she knows 
that your welfare can be secured only as 
you promote the welfare of your wife and 
children. And she knows also that she is 
tempting you to destroy your welfare and 
their welfare. She is sacrificing you as 
well as them. It is a lie that she loves you ; 
and the same is true of your profession 
of love for her. I know you have not re- 
garded it as a lie. I know that even now 
you do not see it in the light in which I 
present it. But it is nevertheless the truth 
that you are as selfish in your attitude 
towards this woman, whom you say you 
love, as you are in your attitude toward 
your wife and your children. You do not 
love her any more than you love them. 
What you call love for her is nothing more 
or less than blind love for yourself. You 
deny this? Well, I will prove that I am 
right. 

"Have you her interests at heart in the 
course you are tempting her to pursue? 

30 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

What is it in her that you love? Tell me 
that. Not her purity of body or soul, since 
you propose to cast both away. Not any 
beauty of character, since this you are de- 
stroying. You cannot say that you have 
her interests at heart or that you are pro- 
posing a course that would promote her 
welfare. If you had, you would not con- 
sent that she live an unholy life with you, 
a life in which she must practice falsehood 
and deceit, a life in which she must speak 
and act a continual lie, a life into which no 
child can come except as a bastard. No, 
do not shrink from the truth, for the truth 
only can make you free. 

" You tell her that Heaven meant you for 
each other, that your marriage to another 
was a mistake which you should not per- 
petuate; and she, poor foolish girl, half 
believes your story true. You know how 
false it is. You know that you could trans- 
fer your sinful affection to another and 
then to another and so on without end. 
Such love as yours has no enduring quality 
in it. It has no personal loyalty in it. It 
is a house on the sand; it may be over- 
turned by any wind that blows. I tell you 
that yielding to this one sensual tempta- 
tion will mean that your whole sensual 
nature will be strengthened, with the in- 

31 



TBTJTHS THAT SAVE 

evitable result of the weakening of your 
power of resisting it." 

"Talk with her," he said, "for I shall 
need her help to end this thing." 

The truth had commenced to make him 
free. Vision of sin had brought volition to 
escape it. 

It is hardly necessary that I write all 
that I said to her, as I sought to deliver 
her from the bondage of error. It is 
enough that I made her realize the utter 
selfishness of his seeming love for her and 
of her love for him. 

"If," I said, "he had such love for you, 
he would have your welfare at heart. Well 
he knows that the course he wants you to 
take will make you a harlot, and that it will 
mean the contradiction of all the holy as- 
pirations of your soul; that it will unfit 
you to be the wife of a true man, that that 
sacred name, wife, with the still more 
sacred name, mother, with which it should 
be connected, will be denied you. He 
knows that in the life he wishes you to 
share with him, you will have no peace with 
God, but a continual sense of His disap- 
proval. And not only this, but he knows 
that the thought of your mother, which has 
been for you a source of pleasure, will be 
turned into a source of pain. You will 

32 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

want to take her picture from your desk. 
If he loved you he would guard you against 
the life into which he is tempting you to 
enter. He is a serpent robed as an angel 
of light, and you are the same to him, 
though neither of you has so regarded 
yourself. 

"I want you to know that truth concern- 
ing the experience that awaits you, if you 
resist the appeals that God's spirit, 
through his truth, is making to you. Your 
sin against the innocent wife and her chil- 
dren will embitter your heart and make it 
impossible for you to live in peace with 
the man of your sinful infatuation. Your 
selfish motive in coming together will 
create a hell for you while you are together 
and will then drive you apart. Have I 
made you see the truth of this thing? Do 
you understand that you cannot retain the 
love of a man after he has ceased to respect 
you? 

"Go," she said to him, "to your wife 
and children and let me go to the pure life 
which I now choose to live." 

Next morning I heard his wife's voice 
over the telephone, saying : 

"He is so changed! He is like his own 
dear self again. Thank God the truth has 
made him free." 

33 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

In each case I had appealed to the spirit 
of God of whose presence both confessed 
they had been painfully conscious. "He 
who would have kept you out of sin," I 
said, "will now lead you out of it. Follow 
Him." 



34 



ADDRESSES IN CHURCH HOUSE 



ADDRESSES IN CHURCH HOUSE 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

The one thing necessary is to know the 
truth about the thing that tempts, for that 
truth only has power to save from the 
temptation. "If the truth shall make you 
free, you shall be free indeed." Truth is 
the only foundation upon which love can 
build a house that will not fall when the 
winds blow and the rains descend and the 
floods beat upon it. I 

Love without truth is blind to the evils 
by which men are tempted; a man may 
be blind to the injury to those he loves 
wrought by his words and deeds. Love has 
moral vision only as it looks through the 
eyes of truth. An illustration comes to 
mind in the case of a young man who loved 
his mother, though his drinking habit was 
her daily torture. For years he continued 
in his life of intemperance solely because 
he did not realize the truth of what he was 
making her suffer. When I opened his 
eyes to that truth his heart melted, and he 
abandoned his sin, from which he has now 

37 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

been free for many years. The love that 
is to save will have to work by the method 
of truth, not the truth concerning some 
theological dogma, but the truth concerning 
the sin from which the man is to be saved. 

Therefore, I say that if you would not 
enter into temptation you must know the 
truth about the thing that tempts you, for 
all evil is rooted in error and error is 
rooted in littleness of mind. Here is the 
only explanation of evil that satisfies me. 
God did not make man evil, but He did 
make him little, and man's littleness in- 
volved him in error, the seed of evil. "For 
the creature was made subject to vanity 
(error) not willingly, but by reason of Him 
who hath subjected the same in hope." 
(Romans 8 : 20.) How very simple that is. 
And how surely it suggests that truth is the 
one way out of evil. How wonderfully does 
Jesus employ and teach this method in His 
work of recovering men from the evils and 
errors of their lives! He has no hope of 
saving men from evil who will not let go of 
their errors. He seeks to save men by fill- 
ing their minds with the truths which cor- 
rect their errors. 

He, therefore, who is tempted to sin 
must seek salvation through the truth. 
Take the evil of covetousness, out of which 

38 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

all other evils come. What is Jesus' way 
of escape from it? Listen. "Beware of 
covetousness for a man's life does not con- 
sist in the abundance of the things he pos- 
sesses." Here error and its evil are clearly 
pointed out. The error that lies at the 
root of covetousness is that a man's life 
does consist in the abundance of things. It 
is because men think that their lives do 
consist in the abundance of things, that 
they are covetous for large possessions. 
What they want is an abundant life — abun- 
dance of pleasure, of rest, of peace, of joy, 
and it is because they feel that they can 
have such abundance of life only as they 
have abundance of money that they covet 
large possessions. But abundance of 
money does not mean abundance of life. 
It is very difficult for the man of wealth to 
reveal a wealth of love through the use of 
money. "She hath given more than them 
all, for she hath given her living, while 
they have given of their abundance." For 
an abundant life one needs only an abun- 
dant love and abundant opportunities to 
manifest it. Without an abundance of 
money one can have an abundance of op- 
portunity to express an abundant love. 
One feels great pity for the selfish rich, 
for it is easier for a camel to pass through 

39 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

the eye of a needle than for them to get 
any return of love from those to whom 
their costless gifts go. A million-dollar 
gift from a Rockefeller does not provoke 
as much real gratitude as the gift of a dol- 
lar from one of his poorly paid employees. 
If a rich man's children love him, it is not 
because of his riches. If he denies them all 
they want, so as to promote their real in- 
terests, the chances are that they will not 
see and consent to his motive, with the re- 
sult that their hearts will harden against 
him;. The rich man has a far harder time 
to develop the souls of his sons and daugh- 
ters than the poor man has, and the atti- 
tude of the world towards the rich man is 
one of envy, jealousy and ill will. All this 
has a tendency to mar the character of the 
rich man. The love of money grows upon 
him with the inevitable result of the loss 
of his love for men. The more money he 
has the more he wants, and, as his posses- 
sions increase, his love for men decreases. 
It is impossible that the love of God should 
grow in the soul of a man who sees his 
brother have need, and shuts up his bowels 
of compassion from him. One cannot serve 
God and Mammon. To know the truth 
about covetousness, as Jesus declares it 
when He says, u Beware of covetousness 

40 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

because a man's life consists not of the 
abundance of the things he possesses/ y is 
to be saved from it. 

To know the truth about falsehood is to 
be saved from it. "Let your 'Yea' be Yea 
and your 'Nay' Nay, for whatsoever is 
more or less than these cometh of evil." 
If we practice falsehood, it is because we do 
not believe this truth concerning it. We 
are tempted to justify falsehood on the 
ground that it is a necessity of life. The 
physician, the lawyer, the preacher, the 
merchant, men in all walks of life and in 
all social relationships, are fearful of trust- 
ing truth as a method of life. The world, 
however, is rapidly coming to recognize 
the fact that truth and love are not in con- 
flict, but in perfect agreement, and that 
one who would advance the real interests 
of men should never hesitate a moment to 
use the method of truth. I know all that 
is said by good people in justification of 
practicing deception, when it only seems 
available for the protection of the life or 
honor of an innocent soul. Dr. Eichard C. 
Cabot says: "I will sum up the results of 
my experiments with truth and falsehood 
by saying that I have not yet found a case 
in which a lie does not do more harm than 
good, and by expressing my belief that if 

41 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

any one will carefully repeat the experi- 
ments he will reach similar results. The 
technic of truth telling is perhaps more 
difficult than the technic of lying, but re- 
sults make it worth acquiring. ' ' The man 
who is resolved never to resort to false- 
hood to conceal anything that he may do is 
protected from yielding to temptations by 
which otherwise he would be overcome. 
In most cases the sinner expects to hide 
his sin under the cover of deception. To 
practice deception concerning any good 
thing which we may have said or done in 
order to escape the disfavor of evil men 
is as great a sin as to attempt to deceive 
good people about our evil deeds. What- 
ever suffering may come from our perfect 
sincerity will prove a gain both to us and 
to all others who may be involved in it. 
Jesus is right, that only evil can come from 
the practice of falsehood. 

When a man is tempted to steal that 
which is another's, or to get in a dishonest 
way that which belongs to him, Jesus' cure 
for this evil is the truth — 

1. That no gain can possibly com- 
pensate for loss of character; 

2. That one who puts character first, 
not consenting to the use of a wrong 
method in attempting to secure a 

42 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

right thing, will find his needs pro- 
vided for. 
A good conscience, a pure heart, a noble 
spirit with fellowship with God, — a man 
need not sacrifice these in order to secure 
any needed material things. Let him fulfill 
every character requirement, and all these 
things will be added unto him. 

When a man is tempted to commit the 
sin of adultery what shall he do? What is 
the shield of protection against this peril? 
What is the truth that will save a man 
from yielding to it? "If your right eye 
offend you," Jesus says, "pluck it out." 
That is not an easy thing to do. One who 
is to practice obedience to such a command- 
ment will have to be nerved for a very 
great effort. I fear we do not know the 
power of this evil, as it appeals to men 
over whom it has gained a power which in 
their own strength they are unable to over- 
come. Countless thousands are held in cap- 
tivity by it, though they pray that they 
may escape from it. Jesus distinctly de- 
clares the method of truth as the only one 
by which they may be saved. The truth 
that saves from this evil is the truth con- 
cerning the evil itself. Let its victim see it 
as it is. Let him know the truth concerning 
the effect its indulgence must have upon 

43 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

his mind and character and body and soul, 
and through him upon those who sin with 
him. Jesus puts this whole thing definitely : 
"It is profitable for you to pluck out your 
eye rather than that your whole body be 
cast into hell. ' ' In other words, it will give 
you strength to do this exceedingly difficult 
thing to remember what it is going to mean 
to you if you don't do it. Know what the 
penalty of continuance in this sin is cer- 
tain to be if you would have power to es- 
cape from it. Judge it by its certain re- 
sults, as you have experienced them, or as 
you have seen them in their frightfulness 
in the lives of others. Consider what it 
must mean to you and to that other one in- 
volved if you go on in this sinful indul- 
gence. Consider what Jesus says it will 
ultimately mean to you, if you don't es- 
cape from it, and you will have power suf- 
ficient to let go of it. 

I passed a man recently whom I knew a 
few years ago, and I hardly recognized 
him, so terribly had this sin changed his 
appearance. Before he fell into it he was 
a man of spiritual countenance, a good hus- 
band and loving father. Now his evasive, 
sensual countenance, his unreliable word, 
his bitter hypocrisy are some of the signs 
of moral wreckage that the sin of impurity 

44 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

has wrought in his life, and there are worse 
results, results so fearful that no one, 
knowing them, would ever take the chance 
of inflicting or experiencing them. There 
is no other evil of which it is so hard for 
man to escape the results of indulgence. 
Years after one has repented and utterly 
forsaken an impure life, a dear child may- 
be born of the holy wedlock into which the 
redeemed man has ventured, and, to his un- 
speakable horror, he sees in that child's 
deformed body or mind the results of the 
sin of impurity, committed in his life before 
his marriage. The penalty attached to the 
sin of uncleanness seems excessive only be- 
cause we do not see how sacredly the mar- 
riage relationship must be guarded, if it 
is to mean the birth of healthy, happy, holy 
children. It is the penalty of corrupting 
life at its source. No wonder the penalty 
for this sin is great, for there can be no 
greater sin. It is a sin in which a man and 
woman conspire to defeat the highest and 
holiest will of God. God has rightly done all 
in his power to prevent men and women 
from yielding to the temptation to commit 
this sin. To know the truth concerning this 
evil is to be saved from it. 

To know the truth about drink will also 
save men from the temptation. It is a 

45 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

mighty temptation. Its power is over- 
whelming in millions of cases that stagger 
through life into drunkards ' graves. Is 
there a truth that can prevent men from 
forming the habit, and save those who have 
become drunkards ? We are just beginning 
to learn the truth about alcoholic stimula- 
tion. The falsehoods concerning it are be- 
ing corrected. We no longer speak of alco- 
hol as good for food, or as a necessary 
medicine. Now we know that it is neither. 
Physicians bear witness that it has no 
value as a medicine. The truth concerning 
its excessive use we all know, how it means 
the utter ruin of manhood, body and soul, 
and how it destroys the harmony of all re- 
lationships in which the drunkard attempts 
to live. We need also to know the truth 
of the perils of drunkenness to the moder- 
ate drinker, and not only to him, but 
through him to others with whom he is as- 
sociated. The reason that the tide of pro- 
hibition is rising on all sides is because the 
truth concerning the liquor traffic is com- 
ing to be known. That truth will save the 
world from it. 

When you are tempted to gamble know 
the truth concerning the thing by which 
you are tempted. Your motive is to get 
something for nothing. You are willing 

46 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

that another should lose in order that you 
may win. There is a strong fascination 
about gambling as there is about every 
other evil thing, and it grows upon a man 
as he practices it, until he becomes its vic- 
tim, in which case he is utterly ruined. 

We may be at a loss to account for the 
moral deterioration of the gambler until 
we remember that gambling is the prac- 
tical denial of the very spirit of God, since 
it is the gambler's aim to get without giv- 
ing, to be served without serving. The 
game in which one cannot find sufficient 
interest without the added stimulant of 
gambling is one in which it will not pay a 
man to indulge. The truth about gambling 
is that it is the very soul of covetousness, 
which contradicts all that is divine in man. 
Look at the gambler, and you will shun 
gambling. The truth about this evil if you 
frankly face it will be sufficient protection 
to you from entering into it. 

The lazy man needs to be made to face 
the truth concerning his sin. Jesus tells us 
the saving truth concerning it. He makes 
laziness a sin. "Thou wicked and slothful 
servant," Jesus said to a man who was too 
lazy to follow the example of those other 
servants who had so traded with their 
lord's money as to increase it. The excuse 

47 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

of this lazy man was not accepted by Jesus. 
Bather He pointed out how empty and false 
it was. " You said the job I gave you was 
hard, that I required a service of you you 
did not feel you could undertake, and still 
you want the reward of those who have 
worked while you loafed. "Without doing 
your part you want to share the product of 
their toil, and you thought that you could 
secure it. Just the reverse is the truth. 
Loss of what you have instead of increase 
of it is the penalty of your refusal to use 
what you have in the interests of others. " 
Let the lazy man be made to see the truth 
regarding the unprofitableness of his lazi- 
ness. Let him be made to see how con- 
temptible his sin is in the attitude of con- 
tempt for him that earnest men manifest. 
Tell him that there is no heaven here nor 
hereafter for the shirk. What a specimen 
of deteriorated manhood he is. How his 
presence is shunned. What a discordant 
note he is in any relationship in which he 
is placed. What a fool he is to think he can 
make the time fly by keeping his eye on the 
clock. Let him know that if he would make 
a ten-hour day a six-hour day, he may do 
so by putting double thought into his work, 
and that he might get so absorbed in it that 
the time would seem no longer. The cure 

48 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

of laziness is in the blessed truth taught by 
Jesus that it is more blessed to serve than 
to be served. The burden of hard labor 
grows easy when it is done with the right 
motive. 

Is pride the temptation? If so, show 
what it is and what it does, especially how 
it destroys the most precious thing on 
earth, fellowship both with God and man, 
for nothing more surely does that than 
pride. A certain man went up to the tem- 
ple to pray who said, "God, I thank Thee 
that I am not as other men." Another 
man by his side would not so much as lift 
up his eyes, but smote himself on the breast 
and said, "God be merciful to me a sin- 
ner.' ' The humble soul learned the truth 
of fellowship with God and man, while the 
proud soul lost both. Pride arouses con- 
tempt, or at best pity, in the souls of those 
who see it. The proud man wants to be 
praised and prized above others, but his 
pride defeats his purpose. Learn how noble 
humility is, and how surely it is blessed 
by God and man. A proud man is sure to 
be a blind man. Jesus speaks of him as 
such, "Thou blind Pharisee.' ' The man 
who thinks he has need of nothing does not 
know that he is in need of everything. 
"Happy are the poor in spirit for theirs 

49 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

is the Kingdom of God. ' 9 If the proud man 
could be made to see what an unsightly- 
thing, what a burdensome thing, what an 
offensive thing pride is in the sight of God 
and man, he would put it away. 

When you are tempted to hate any one, 
know the truth by which only you can be 
saved from such temptation. You cannot 
possibly hate a man without desiring to 
harm him. Hate wills evil to the one hated. 
Hate wants to strike for the sole purpose 
of paining, never for the purpose of taking 
away evil. Hate is always vindictive, never 
remedial. Therefore Jesus says that hate 
is murder. He who hates wants to injure, 
or to have some injury come upon his 
enemy — injury to his name or his friend- 
ships or his joy. God never hates those 
whom He afflicts. He never punishes for 
His own pleasure, but for our profit. Very 
wretched is the soul in whom hate dwells. 
He who wishes another to suffer anything 
except for his own good hates him, and we 
are never to hate any one, however much 
he hates us or those whom we love. 

Are you tempted to be angry with any 
one? If so, remember that, while Jesus 
never hated any one, He was angry with 
many, very angry. He was angry with 
those who wronged any one, but his anger 

50 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

was always right. We need here to dis- 
tinguish very clearly between anger and 
hate. One is consistent with love, while 
the other is its denial. One seeks to injure. 
The other seeks to help. To be angry with 
a man may be helpful for him, if he sees 
that the anger does not mean hate of him, 
and there can be anger without a vestige of 
hate or ill will. 

" And looking round on them with anger, 
being grieved at the hardness of their 
heart,' ' are words written of Jesus. Mark 

III. 5. "But I say unto you, That whoso- 
ever is angry with his brother without a 
cause shall be in danger of the judgment' ' 
is His own Statement. 

And again: "Be ye angry and sin not; 
let not the sun go down upon your anger, 
neither give room to the devil. ' ' Ephesians 

IV. 26. Righteous wrath or indignation 
is consistent with love, since it is an ex- 
pression of disapproval of that which 
needs to be corrected. Without it some 
sins can never be seen or cured. It is 
necessary to make a man thoroughly hate 
and forsake his sin. It is taking towards 
another's fault the attitude that he himself 
must take towards it in order to be saved 
from it. One may be angry and sin not, if 
one keeps hate out of his anger. The mo- 

51 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

ment that hate comes into the anger it be- 
comes sinful and harmful. The anger that 
Jesus condemns is the anger that has no 
cause. To be angry without cause is to 
take an unjust attitude towards a man. 
How easily we fall into this sin I How care- 
ful we must be to escape it ! One will have 
to watch and pray earnestly if he is not to 
enter into this temptation, to be angry 
without cause. In all the relationships of 
life we are in daily peril of being angry 
where there is no cause, and for that reason 
our anger can only be harmful to ourselves, 
and to those against whom it is expressed. 
I know of no temptation against which we 
should be so thoroughly and earnestly and 
prayerfully on our guard as being angry 
without cause. Nothing but love can pro- 
tect us from this deadly evil. We need to 
see the truth about this evil in order to es- 
cape from it. Jesus said, "The man who 
is angry with his brother without cause 
shall be in danger of the judgment/ ' that is, 
he commits a sin that cannot be lightly 
passed over. He should judge himself con- 
cerning it. It is most important that we 
express our disapproval of evil wherever 
we find it, but we must be careful that it is 
evil. We are never to appear to approve 
what in our hearts we condemn. We must 

52 



TEUTHS THAT SAVE 

not smile upon any form of iniquity. 
Neither should we withhold our approval 
of any good thing. This is most important, 
far more important than we have imagined. 
We must see that we have cause for our 
anger, and we must be sure that it never 
gets to be ill will. We must never be angry 
with a repentant sinner. Here is the dif- 
ference between the father and the elder 
brother of the prodigal son. The elder 
brother is angry with the prodigal at a time 
when his anger is not justified, since his 
brother has forsaken his sin. We have no 
right to be angry with a man who is doing 
his best to overcome his faults. Moreover, 
let us be sure our anger is sincere by mak- 
ing certain that we are angry at those 
things in ourselves which arouse our anger 
toward our brother. i ' Slow to anger and 
plenteous in mercy" is the true spirit. 

When you are tempted to be jealous, to 
be angry that another should be loved as 
you are, know the truth about the thing 
that tempts you. Know that it is rooted 
and grounded in selfishness. Nothing is 
more cruel than jealousy in its punishment 
of the person who yields to its power. It 
is always a thing of hate. It is more cruel 
than the grave. It never has the interests 
of the one hated at heart. We speak of it 

53 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

as "insane jealousy/ ' because there is no 
reason in it. The cure of it is to be found 
in the truth concerning it. One needs to 
see it in its selfish ugliness, how it belittles 
the one in whom it dwells, what a hell it 
makes where it is found, how it blinds the 
one whose heart is poisoned to the only pos- 
sible way of escape from bondage to it. 
The jealous wife makes herself less and 
less attractive to her husband. She kills 
what love is left in his heart toward her 
by the attitude she takes towards him. One 
of the deadliest enemies of the soul is jeal- 
ousy. To see it in its right light is to so 
thoroughly hate it as to easily overcome it. 
It is not necessary to go farther in illus- 
trating the blessed fact that there is power 
in truth itself to save from all sin. As we 
must choose the highest when we see it, so 
we must choose not evil but good, since 
good is infinitely higher than evil. To see 
good and evil in their right light is to make 
the choice of good inevitable. It is as im- 
possible that a man should choose evil 
rather than good when he sees them both 
as they are, as it would be for that man to 
choose insanity rather than reason, know- 
ing them both. Therefore we should most 
earnestly seek to know the truth concern- 
ing good and evil. Our daily prayer should 

54 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

be, i i Lord, open my eyes that I may know 
error from truth and so be delivered from 
the love and power of all evil." And we 
should seek the answer to our prayer 
where it may be found — from those experts 
who can teach us the truth concerning the 
evils by which we are tempted. Every 
preacher should be such an expert. He 
should tell the people the truth concerning 
the sins from which he calls them to re- 
pentance. No man should be ordained to 
the ministry until he is prepared for such 
a mission. It must be made sure that he 
knows good from evil. Parents, also, 
should teach their children the truths that 
save. Our theatres should do the same. 
How unprotected in the hour of tempta- 
tion are those who do not know the truth 
with regard to the evils by which they are 
tempted. If you are a pastor, let me beg 
of you that you preach a series of sermons 
on The Truths That Save. 

Abundant material for such sermons is 
within easy reach. Never mind about a 
possible hell after death, let the people 
know the truth concerning the results of 
evil here and now. "Why not get Christian 
physicians, lawyers, employers and social 
workers to give their testimony for right- 
eousness, showing how it promotes health, 

55 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

harmony and business. In other words, 
why not use all possible means to fin the 
minds of the people with 

Truths That Save 



H 

TEMPTED BY A HUNGRY HEART * 

Jesus was in the wilderness where he 
could not satisfy his hunger with bread. 
What he rightly desired he could not get in 
the right way. Multitudes are going 
through a similar experience. Many are 
in a social wilderness where there is no 
bread for their heart's hunger. The rela- 
tionships of love that are necessary for 
their life are closed to them, with the result 
that their hearts are starving to death. 
This is a fearful form of starvation. Un- 
able to find the pure love for which they 
hunger, they are tempted by the devil of 
selfishness to take love that belongs to 
others. A hungry heart in a social wilder- 
ness is sure to be tempted to get love from 
wrong sources. It is bad to have a hus- 
band's heart hungry for love that he can- 
not find in the heart of his wife. Wives 
should be sure to protect their husbands 

1 Matt. 4:2-3. 

56 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

from such hunger, and husbands should do 
the same for their wives. Where either one 
is not the bread of pure love for the 
other, the result for both is temptation to 
seek elsewhere that which has been denied 
where only it should be sought. 

"Why am I so tempted to seek the com- 
pany of other women V 9 a married man 
asked me. "Why do I have a continual 
fight to resist my impulses to seek from 
them a love which man is supposed to find 
in his wife V 9 " Because, ' 9 1 said, ' ' you are 
not finding in your wife the love for which 
you hunger. There was a time when it 
was there for you, when her love for you 
satisfied your hungry heart. But she no 
longer loves you as she did? Why not? 
Who is responsible for her loss of love for 
you? Have you chilled it by your failure 
to respond when it has been offered to you ? 
Are you simply reaping the penalty of your 
neglect to keep the heart of your wife filled 
with love for you? Are you like one of 
those foolish virgins whose light went out 
because they neglected to refill their lamps 
with oil?" Many husbands utterly fail to 
appreciate the fact that it is their most 
sacred duty to nourish and guard the love 
of their wives. 

I think of one whose hungry heart urges 

57 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

her to seek a love that can never satisfy it. 
She is in a wilderness where there is no 
bread, a wilderness full of wild beasts of 
temptation, and she has been tempted to 
turn the stones into bread to seek to satisfy 
her hunger with a selfish love that belongs 
to others. She has been tempted to satisfy 
her hunger with the selfish love of one who 
is not prepared to fulfill it in a lifelong 
marriage. In a word, she is in a love wil- 
derness where there is no true bread for 
her hunger. 

What shall such starving souls do who 
cannot find that human love without which 
it seems their souls must die? How can 
they escape the temptation to satisfy their 
hearts at the expense of marring their 
characters ? Their temptation is the great- 
est the soul meets. Those who are tempted 
to get money in wrong ways are not so 
severely tempted as they who are tempted 
to get love in wrong ways. 

To these we say, first, that stone cannot 
possibly satisfy hunger for bread. No 
stolen love can satisfy the soul's hunger 
for honest love. No love taken away from 
another to whom it belongs can be the 
same as love that does not belong to an- 
other. The starving soul cannot get what 
it needs, and without which it would perish, 

58 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

in any love that does not fulfill the law of 
righteousness and truth. As one cannot 
steal an honest dollar so one cannot steal 
pure love. To know that one truth is to be 
protected from the temptation to attempt 
with what is stone to satisfy our hunger 
for bread. The thing that you cannot get 
rightly, without sacrificing the interests 
of others, will never satisfy your desires. 
Oh, remember this when you are hungry 
for that which is seemingly beyond your 
righteous reach. 

What, then, is a soul starving in the 
wilderness to do if he is not to make bread 
out of stone, and there seems no bread to 
be had in any other way! If the human 
love cannot be had must the heart eternally 
starve ? No, there is bread to be had from 
another source, and an abundance of bread 
of the most satisfying character. "Man 
shall not live by bread alone, but by every 
word that proceeds from the mouth of 
God." There is the bread of God's love 
which the hungry soul can eat. 

Though he be in a love wilderness, 
though he be set apart from all human love 
relationships, the eternal love is within his 
reach. He can satisfy his soul with that 
bread which came down from heaven, of 
which if a man eat he shall not die but shall 

59 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

have eternal life. This blessed fact is wit- 
nessed to by thousands of men and women 
who are cut off from the relationships 
through which the heart is fed. "Without 
the bread of human love they are nourished 
and satisfied by the divine love freely given 
them by God's gracious spirit. Such souls, 
by feeding on the bread of life, have over- 
come the temptations to make stone take 
the place of bread. If in your heart no hus- 
band dwells, if it is empty of little children 
whose love you cannot have, it may be filled 
with the love of God, of whose personal, 
spiritual presence you may be conscious. 
When, therefore, you pray to be delivered 
from the perils of an empty heart, connect 
your prayer with another, "Give me this 
day, God, my daily bread of thy love." 
"And angels came and ministered to 
him."' A man who is in touch with God, 
whose love fills his heart, will be minis- 
tered to by others sharing his divine ex- 
perience. The law of spiritual attraction 
will bring him in contact with such persons, 
and their fellowship added to his experi- 
ence of God will make it impossible for 
him to know the temptations of the hungry 
heart. 



60 



TEUTHS THAT SAVE 

in 

VISION AND VOLITION 1 

Vision and volition are closely connected, 
but that connection is not clearly seen by 
many. Where there is no vision there is 
no volition, and where vision is dim voli- 
tion is weak. Knowing this, the Master 
calls the attention of the naked man to 
his condition. His motive in so doing is 
love, since his aim is to induce the man to 
robe him in beautiful garments. Before 
we can enrich a man, we must make him 
see his poverty. Before we can clothe 
him we must make him see his nakedness. 
Before we can give him vision we must 
make him realize his blindness. So long 
as a man says, "I am rich, increased in 
goods and have need of nothing," we are 
powerless to give him vision, to enrich him, 
to clothe him. 

Men come into my office walking in naked 
falsehoods, without a shred to conceal 
them, without being at all conscious of 
their condition, and even when they are 
made to admit their falsehoods they walk 
naked in them without realizing their 
shame. It is not until they are made to see 

1 Rev. 3: 17-18. 

61 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

the shame of the falsehood that they have 
power to escape from continuance in it. 
And what is true of falsehood is true of 
every evil thing, vision of which is essential 
for the development of sufficient volition to 
enable a man to escape it. A deep convic- 
tion of sin, therefore, must always precede 
a true conversion. Men are lost to shame 
because they are blind to their sins. Make 
them see sin as it is, in its shameful effects 
upon those whom it involves, make them 
see it in connection with what it would 
mean if all men should practice it, and 
there will come to them such hatred of it, 
as the result of clear vision of it, as will 
make it possible for God to supply them 
with the necessary power of will to escape 
from further practice of it. 

My experience in Church House for 
eight years, in dealing with thousands of 
men and women down and out in sin, has 
convinced me that the one great thing to be 
aimed at in serving men is to open their 
eyes to the shamefulness of sins that do 
not appear to them in that light at all. 
Not by making light of such sin, nor by 
exaggerating it, but by getting men to 
form a clear conception of it, are they de- 
livered from it. 



62 



TEUTHS THAT SAVE 

IV 
A DRUNKEN HUSBAND 1 

"What is the good of your life to you?" 
I asked. "None," he replied. "What's 
it worth to your wife, who will never have 
any peace until you are dead, unless you 
are saved from the drink? And the chil- 
dren — how much of good does it mean to 
them that you are alive? When they are 
asked about their father, what do they have 
to say? Either they must lie or confess 
that you have left them to starve for the 
money you have spent for drink. And if 
you die in this state and they ever come 
to your grave, what will be their 
thoughts?" 

"For God's sake, stop," he said. 

"No," I replied, "I cannot stop yet, for 
you will never have will power sufficient 
to overcome your drink habit until you see 
it as it is in its relations to the innocent 
suffering of your people. If all men should 
follow your example, it would wreck every 
home, it would beggar every child, it would 
stop all business. In other words, if no 
man could be depended on to keep sober 
longer than you can, the whole world would 

* Mark 9 : 42. 

63 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

perish in a very hell of chaos and pain. To 
put it in plain language, your example and 
influence would wreck the world/ ' 

"It isn't so bad as that." 

"Yes," I replied, "no words can picture 
what your example of habitual drunken- 
ness would mean if it should be universally 
followed, and it is necessary that you 
should see this in order that you may have 
power to escape it." 

And he saw his sin and was saved 
from it. 



OUT OF TUNE 1 

"So far as lieth in you, live 'peaceably with all men" 

Harmony is the great word. It matters 
not whether the key is white or black, bass 
or treble, there is something the matter 
with it if it does not chord with the other 
keys with which it is connected. If where 
it is there is discord, it is wrong somehow, 
for if it were as it was intended by its 
maker, it would help with others to make 
music instead of creating discord. And 
what is true of the musical instrument is 
also true of every member of the body, 

1 Rom. 12:18. 

64 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

whether the hand, or the foot, or the eye, 
or the ear. If it is hindering other mem- 
bers from doing their work, if it is involv- 
ing them in weakness and pain, it is 
because it is wrong in some way. 

It is precisely so with us men. If we 
cannot live in harmonious relations of 
peace with others, it is because we are not 
right in ourselves. There is something 
wrong in us, or we should be in perfect 
harmony with one another, and there would 
be music where we are, for God never made 
us for discord. 

To find out what it is in us that prevents 
us from living in harmonious relations 
with others, is to learn what it is in us that 
must be corrected. That is a very simple 
statement, is it not? You ask me what you 
must do to be saved, and I reply, find out 
what it is in you that prevents you from 
living in harmonious relationship with 
others, — and overcome that. Unless you 
do, nothing else will matter. You may be- 
lieve what you please, and join as many 
churches as you like, but unless you cor- 
rect in yourself that which is discordant, 
that which makes it impossible that there 
should be harmony in any relationship in 
which you are, all will go for nothing. 

It is not difficult to discover what the 

65 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

discordant things in us are, what those 
things are that unfit a man for harmonious 
relations with God and men. They are cer- 
tain to queer him in all the relationships 
of life in which he may be placed. They 
may all be included in a single word — sel- 
fishness. No harmonious relationship can 
be organized on the basis of that motive, 
for selfish people cannot live in peace with 
others who are selfish, like themselves. 
Unity of motive, in that case, does not mean 
harmony of life. Neither can the selfish 
person live in harmony with the unselfish 
person, so that the selfish person cannot 
live in harmony with any one. Can you 
live in peace in a life of falsehood, or un- 
cleanness, or drunkenness, or pride, or 
laziness ? Certainly not. So, if there is to 
be a heaven here, or hereafter, or any- 
where, to be fitted for it you will have to 
be free from the things in yourself that are 
rooted and grounded in a selfish motive. 
Pray, therefore, that God's holy love may 
be shed abroad in your heart, as it will be 
when with all your heart you so desire. 



66 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

VI 

TWO MOTIVES 1 

Two motives are represented by two 
foundations, one of sand and the other of 
rock. The man who built on the sand did 
not consider what was under his house or 
what relation it had to the question 
whether his house would stand or fall when 
it was tested. He represents multitudes who 
do not look at what is underneath their 
deeds and words, who never consider their 
motive in speaking or acting as they do. 
And yet, motive is to conduct what a 
foundation is to a building. 

A strong motive must underlie and sup- 
port a strong life. Men fall into sin be- 
cause their motive is selfish, — precisely 
as the house on the sand falls because of 
its surface foundation, — for selfishness is 
weakness. So far as supporting a right 
life is concerned, it is absolutely inade- 
quate. It will not, it cannot, under any 
circumstances of education, or wealth, or 
culture, support such a life. 

A right life cannot long stand safely on 
a wrong motive. Men do not seem to see 
this any more than the man who builded 

* Matt. 7 : 24-27. 

67 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

on a sand foundation saw that his house 
would not stand when it was tested. 

Here is revealed the secret of the failure 
of multitudes of men, in all their earnest 
efforts to live the Christian life. They try 
to live such a life. They make plans to de- 
velop the Christian character, and all their 
labors go for nothing, solely because they 
neglect to find and fulfil the proper motive. 
Their will is weak, because their motive 
is wrong. This is the secret of their weak- 
ness. It explains their repeated failures, 
which will continue to multiply until their 
cause is discovered and corrected. A 
wrong motive is always connected with dim 
moral vision with its feeble volition. 

There is but one foundation for all rela- 
tionships, political, economic, social — the 
same foundation for all virtues, — chastity, 
honesty, truthfulness, meekness, patience, 
humility. The gates of hell cannot prevail 
against the man whose motive is love. A 
man becomes a Christian in that moment 
when he takes as his character-foundation 
the one motive of Jesus. Until he does that 
he may profess all creeds of religion, but all 
will be in vain. Until he takes that motive, 
his foundation is on the sand, his lamp is 
without oil, he is without the wedding gar- 
ment, he is meal without leaven, he is soil 

68 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

without the good seed. In a word, the re- 
pentance that opens the Kingdom of God to 
a man, the repentance that marks the be- 
ginning of the life of God in man, the re- 
pentance that precedes and insures the 
new birth of man is — Oh ! hear my word, — - 
don't miss my thought, — that repentance 
is change of motive, not change of belief to 
some other dogma of religion, not connec- 
tion of one's self with some ecclesiastical 
institution, but change of heart, or motive, 
from selfishness to unselfishness, from put- 
ting one's own interests first to putting 
the interest of others first. 



VII 

PEOTECT YOUR MOTIVE 

Protect your motive, for it will be in 
peril until it is finally perfected. While 
it is growing, many things will endanger 
it. If you don't guard it the birds will 
catch it away, or the sun will wither it, or 
the thorns will choke it. It is like the oil 
in the lamp of the virgins which must be 
frequently replenished if the light is to be 
kept burning until the bridegroom comes. 
That embodiment of wisdom — Merlin, did 

69 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

not notice that the impersonation of evil — 
Vivian, had taken possession of the rudder 
of his boat and was steering it, when he 
thought he still had control of it. So a 
man's motive may change and he not know 
it. In the language of Jesus, while he is 
asleep the enemy may come and sow tares 
among the wheat. 

A selfish motive does not often go by its 
right name, or appear in its true light. It 
has an infinite variety of disguises, often 
appearing as an angel of light. It is a wolf, 
but it comes in sheep's clothing. You will 
need, therefore, greatly need, to protect 
yourself from mistake concerning your 
motive. Selfishness is the most subtle of 
all the evils of the world. It will so blind 
you that you will think you have the inter- 
ests of others at heart even when you are 
sacrificing their interests to your own sel- 
fish ambitions or appetites or passions. 



vin 

MOTIVE MISINTERPRETED 1 

It would seem impossible that one should 
mistake hay, wood and stubble for gold 

* 1 Cor. 3 : 11-13. 

70 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

and precious stones. Of course this is not 
possible in a material sense, but it is pos- 
sible in the matter of mistaking one's mo- 
tive. With love as their motive, people 
say and do things that are absolutely value- 
less if not positively harmful, things that 
defeat their purpose, things that are as 
much out of harmony with their motive as 
hay and wood and stubble were out of har- 
mony with the unperishable foundation of 
stone upon which they were built. 

Let me give you some illustrations of this 
from my own experience and the experi- 
ence of others with whom I have been 
brought into contact in my work in Church 
House. How much of worthless and harm- 
ful work do we find connected with a good 
motive ! Here is a person with a heart full 
of love, whose one aim is to advance the 
interests of suffering humanity, but by in- 
discriminate giving she defeats her pur- 
pose and does infinitely more harm than 
good. Her works have to be destroyed, 
not because their motive is evil, but be- 
cause their motive has been strangely mis- 
guided. Recently a woman: came to me in 
a highly nervous state, bordering on in- 
sanity, asking help. I found the nervous 
tension of her life was due to this mistaken 
application of her motive. She was deny- 

71 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

ing herself the very things that she needed 
for her health, in order that she might have 
more money to give for the relief of the 
sick and the suffering. She was unfitting 
herself for service to others by the very 
things that she was doing in order to serve 
them. A few years ago I had a painful 
experience along the same line. Desiring 
to fulfill, in the largest possible way, the 
Christian motive, I refused to take the 
necessary vacations from my work, devot- 
ing all my time to active efforts on behalf 
of suffering humanity, but as the result of 
breaking nature 's laws, I was compelled to 
lay aside entirely from my work for over 
four months. 

It seems to me that no one could have 
chosen a better illustration of this peril of 
a misguided motive than Paul has given us 
in the text. It exactly sets it forth. Un- 
derneath so much of valueless work, where 
one would not suspect its presence, one will 
find a true Christian motive. The loss re- 
sulting from this misguiding of true motive 
is very great, — the loss of all the enduring 
work that might have been done in the time 
that was wasted, and of all good results 
that could have been secured with the 
money that was wasted, — hay, wood and 
stubble in doctrines of religion, fit only for 

72 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

destruction 5 hay, wood and stubble in phil- 
anthropic work — all lost because not done 
in wisdom as well as love. 

How shall we apply our motive so that 
our methods shall not contradict it? I 
think there is only one answer to this ques- 
tion, and that is by relating more closely 
and harmoniously everything that we do 
with the one true motive in the light of 
which we shall be able to see the proper 
methods by which to fulfil it. A little 
thought would have shown the builders 
that What they were building on the 
foundation was not according to its char- 
acter. The one true foundation is also the 
clear guide concerning the superstructure 
to build upon it. Get the true foundation 
and you need not mistake what should be 
the nature of that which is constructed 
upon it. Anything you may do that con- 
tradicts holy love will prove valueless- 
it will profit you nothing. When you would 
help a man consider what will advance his 
interest, not what will meet his desires. 



73 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

IX 

"NOW YE ARE CLEAN" 1 

Jesus said this after he had washed his 
disciples ' feet. It is almost impossible for 
us to imagine the change that was made in 
the souls of Christ's disciples by this act. 
He so washed their feet as to purify their 
hearts, cleansing them, at least for the mo- 
ment, from pride and selfishness. When 
he had finished his service of love he said 
unto them, "Ye are clean." 

We have all had such moments, when, as 
the result of the touch of Christ, we have 
felt his cleansing power. Then we were 
cleansed of all intention to sin. There was 
no purpose in our hearts to do evil. "But 
not all," Jesus said. He made one excep- 
tion to his statement, "Now ye are clean," 
and the exceptional man was Judas, in 
whom there was no intention to be clean, 
since at that very moment he was deliber- 
ately planning to betray his Master for 
gain. The distinction that Jesus makes 
here, between the clean and the unclean, is 
worthy of our closest attention and de- 
mands our clearest interpretation. 

There is exactly this difference between 

1 John 13 : 10. 

74 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

two classes of men in this service and in 
this Church House. They may be equally 
sinful in word and deed, but to one Jesus 
says, "Now ye are clean, " while to the 
other he says, "But not you." For that 
man is clean in Christ's sight who aims to 
be clean, who struggles to be clean, prays 
to be clean, who has no unclean intention, 
or purpose, in his heart. To such a man 
the comforting words of the Son of God 
come tonight, "Now, now ye are clean." 
Uncleansed as you are of the defilement of 
sin, you are clean since you no longer love 
sin. God does not impute to a man that 
which the man does not aim for, that which 
he hates, that from which he is longing to 
escape. In His sight every man is what he 
purposes to be. Glorious word of Christ, 
"Now," not henceforth, not after your 
words and deeds have been perfected, but 
"Now," in anticipation of such perfecting, 
because the purpose of it is in your heart 
and the consecration to it is in your soul 
and the faith of it is in your mind. 
"Now," Jesus says, "ye are clean." 

Every man in this congregation, I say, 
however sinful he is, may hear this gracious 
word, "Now ye are clean, "upon the simple 
condition that I have declared, the condi- 
tion of purpose to surrender his heart to 

75 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

God for the cleansing which he wills and 
which, with all his heart, he desires. 

It seems almost too sad to have to add, 
"But not all," with reference to some men 
here present. But that sentence, also, be- 
longs to every man here who knows, in his 
soul, that he loves sin and that he purposes 
to commit sin when he has opportunity to 
do so in such fashion that he may hope to 
escape its penalty. If, like Judas, you are 
secretly intending to sin, no matter how 
much you may involve the innocent in suf- 
fering, — if selfishness, in a single word, is 
your motive and intention, then you are the 
man who is excepted from this statement, 
' ' Now ye are clean. ' ' You are one of those 
to whom the words, "But not all," belong. 
It is a fearful exception, one which I should 
not like to have applied to my soul, one 
from which I should think you would want 
to escape at this moment. 

And such escape you may make, if, even 
now, you will have your motive cleansed, 
so that it shall be possible for God, by His 
Holy Spirit and by the word of His dear 
Son, Jesus Christ, to include you among 
those to whom He can say, "Now ye are 
clean." What a gracious word that is! 
What comfort it brings to a man's -con- 
science ! What a burden it takes from his 

76 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

soul to have the assurance afresh from the 
lips of Jesus, and confirmed by the Spirit 
of God in his own conscience, that he is now 
clean in the sight of God, because he wills 
to be clean, and intends to avail himself of 
the cleansing ministries of the religion of 
Jesus. Sweetest word on mortal's tongue, 
sweetest carol ever sung, "Now, now ye 
are clean.'' 

X 

FOR THEIR SAKES I SANCTIFY 

MYSELF THAT THEY MAY BE 

SANCTIFIED THROUGH THE 

TRUTH 1 

If I should judge Jesus by this single 
sentence, I should love him with all my 
heart and pray that I might be filled with 
his Spirit. I do not know of any word 
of Jesus that more highly honors him — 
' * For their sakes. ' ' Whose ? Those whom 
the Father has given me. Those with 
whom I am, or ever shall be, in touch. 
"For their sakes I sanctify myself." 
Their interests demand this of me, for I 
shall be able to do so much for them if I 
sanctify myself unto God on their behalf, 

1 John 17: 19. 

"77 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

to receive from Him what they need. In- 
deed, the fact is that their greatest needs 
cannot be fulfilled by one who is not thus 
set apart unto God. One who, therefore, 
loves men will sanctify himself unto God 
on their behalf. It is the greatest thing a 
man can do for others, the richest of all 
service he can render, and therefore its 
rewards are the greatest that a soul can 
win for himself. 

A man who sanctifies himself, not that he 
merely, or first of all, may be sanctified, but 
that others through him may be sanctified, 
fulfills the very mission of the Son of God 
in saving the world. Nothing short of such 
sanctification of himself to God as Jesus 
made of himself to God can qualify one for 
fellowship with Jesus in his world-saving 
mission. This will appear more clearly 
when we come to understand what Christ 
meant when he said, "I sanctify my self/ ' 

The word sanctify means to set apart. 
It is from the same root as saint, and 
holy. For one to sanctify himself to God 
is to wholly set himself apart unto God, to 
surrender himself fully to do God's will on 
earth as it is done in heaven. Negatively, 
he was to separate himself from all that 
would prevent him from enjoying intimate 
personal union with God. Jesus saw 

78 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

clearly what those things were from which 
he must sanctify himself if he would dwell 
in God and have God dwell in him. And 
his love for his disciples, and for the world 
that should at last through them believe in 
Him, was sufficient to lead him to gladly 
renounce all that separated him from God. 

Let us get into the very heart of Jesus 
here; let us look at the text through his 
eyes. Then wte shall see Jesus as he looks 
upon the polluted and perishing state of 
his disciples, and others, with whom he was 
in touch. How keenly he felt their sorrows 
and how sadly he lamented their sins ! He 
could not bear the thought that they should 
be left unsaved and unhelped in their per- 
ishing condition. " Sheep,' ' he said they 
were, "without a shepherd"; men con- 
sumed of thirst, without any means of find- 
ing the springs; persons perishing with 
hunger, without any ability to find bread ; 
souls being preyed upon by wolves in 
sheep's clothing, whose disguise they were 
unable to penetrate in time to escape 
destruction. 

"For their sakes" — for the sake of those 
who could have no help except he brought 
it, who could not save themselves and 
whom no man seemed able to save. "For 
their sakes,' ' who looked in vain for help 

79 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

to the church with all of its worthless sac- 
rifices and services. 

Oh, the appeal that the helpless state of 
men made to Jesus, to Jesus who clearly 
saw that these people were unsaved, not be- 
cause they were indifferent or unwilling to 
be saved, but because no man so loved them 
as to put himself at God's disposal, so that 
through him God could save them! 

Jesus knew that the power and peace and 
joy and health that these men needed could 
only be had from God through some one 
who was in such personal and intimate re- 
lationship to God that he could receive 
from Him what they needed, and transmit 
it to them. He realized that God had an 
abundance of all that these men needed, 
but that He was unable to impart it to them 
because He could find no one through 
whom He could send His gifts. It is the 
Father's will to impart what one man 
needs through some other man. So when 
Jesus said, ' i For their sakes I sanctify my- 
self," he meant that he proposed to connect 
God and man, to so open his whole soul to 
them both in holy love, that he should be 
able to s^rve as a channel for the Father 
to send His gifts to His children. 

Could any man have a higher aim or 
nobler motive than that? "For their sakes 

80 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

I sanctify myself.' 9 Could words sweeter 
than those fall on mortal ears ? How beau- 
tiful the soul whence they came ; and their 
greatness becomes still greater when we 
understand that Jesus sanctified himself 
unto God, not only for the sake of those 
who loved him, but also for the sake of 
those who hated him and who would cru- 
cify him. He set himself apart from every 
sin from which he sought to free others, 
from the love of money of Judas, from the 
moral cowardice of Peter, from the unbe- 
liefs of Thomas, from the sins of the 
women \tfho felt when they touched him 
that they were clean, from the sin of pride 
which he rebuked with his deepest humility. 
From all the sins of men, he sanctified him- 
self, that through his example he might 
have sanctifying influence upon them. 

His motive must be ours if we are to do 
his works. Let parents who would sanctify 
their children sanctify themselves from all 
from which they would free their children. 
Let pastors who would sanctify their con- 
gregations sanctify themselves from all 
from which they would sanctify their peo- 
ple. Let no man preach against that from 
which he is not himself struggling, with all 
his might and prayer to God for help, to 
sanctify himself. 

81 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

My dear reader, permit me to be very 
personal here. Let me tell you of the effect 
of what I have written on my own soul, 
as I have questioned myself concerning my 
experience of my own words and have 
asked again and again, am I ready to turn 
aside from all that mars my fellowship 
with my God, that I may be able to lead 
others to do the same? Do I so love men 
as for their sakes to sanctify myself unto 
God that through me He may help them? 
Am I prepared to give up all that weakens 
my sense of the presence of God and so 
hinders it from fully influencing me on the 
behalf of suffering, sinning, dying human- 
ity? Join with me in this one prayer above 
all others, that we may unite with our Lord 
in saying, "For their sakes I sanctify 
myself. ' ' 



XI 

ASKING, SEEKING, KNOCKING 1 

These words are not synonyms by any 
means. Jesus does not here simply change 
the figure to express in different words the 
idea of praying for what we need. We 
must ask, but asking, alone, is not enough. 

1 Matt. 7 : 7-8. 

82 



TBUTHS THAT SAVE 

Seeking must go with asking, if our 
asking is to mean finding. If we ask 
for bread and seek it in a stone, we shall 
ask in vain. If we ask for fish and seek it 
in a scorpion, can God give us what we ask? 
If we ask for coal, we must seek it where 
there is coal. Every one that asketh, re- 
ceiveth, if he seeks what he asks where it 
may be found, but not otherwise. 

This is a great truth, is it not? How 
clearly it explains why much of our asking 
has been in vain ! Have we not asked with- 
out any thought of seeking what we ask 
where it might be found? When we ask 
for material bread, we seek it where it may 
be found. When we ask for knowledge, we 
seek it in books and schools, where it may 
be found; but when we ask for spiritual 
things we do not employ the same wisdom 
in seeking them. 

We ask for the fruits of the Spirit with- 
out seeking the Spirit. We ask for the love 
of God but do not seek it in His Spirit in 
our hearts and in close fellowship with 
those who embody it. We pray for 
strength but fill our mind with thoughts of 
weakness. We pray for peace and seek it 
in that which, is discordant. We pray for 
rest without seeking it in the one great 

83 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

restful motive. We ask for purity without 
seeking that which purifies. 

We may ask what we will that is in Jesus 
if we seek it in him. If we seek in his 
words and deeds what we ask God to give 
us through him, we shall surely receive 
what we ask. 

Only, remember, we may have to knock 
in order to find what we seek. What does 
that mean? We seek what we ask where 
it may be found, but it may require some 
effort on our part to possess it. The de- 
sired thing may not be found by us at once, 
even when we come where it is. I have 
such an experience with texts, in which I 
find what I seek of truth after I have 
knocked at their door for a while. They 
do not always immediately open to me, in 
response to my asking for the truths which 
they contain. Sometimes a little medita- 
tion reveals something in my state of mind 
that must be removed before I can possibly 
see and enter into the truth of the text in 
which what I seek is embodied. When we 
fulfill the conditions of this text, as they 
are clearly indicated by Jesus, when we ask 
that which he wills for us, and seek it where 
he has laid it up for us, with patient effort 
to fulfill in ourselves the conditions of en- 
tering into possession of it, our asking will 

84 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

mean receiving, our seeking will mean find- 
ing, our knocking will mean that it will be 
opened to us. 



XII 
A WRETCHED MAN 1 

I know of no wretchedness so terrible 
as that of the man of this text, whose 
wretchedness consisted in his utter inabil- 
ity at the time to see any hope of escape 
from bondage to a sin that he hated. If he 
had not hated the sin he would not have felt 
so keenly his bondage to it. As he tells 
us in the context, he " loved righteousness 
in the inner man," but he was compelled 
to do the things he hated, and could not do 
the things he loved. This is the wretched 
state of multitudes of good men. Theirs is 
the most cruel form of bondage the world 
knows. How unspeakably wretched is the 
man who longs to speak the truth but is 
forced to lie, who longs to love but is com- 
pelled to hate, who wants to be pure but 
is forced into impurity, who wants to act 
on the motive of unselfishness but finds 
himself speaking and acting selfishly every 
day ! Oh, wretched man that he is ! As a 

1 Bom. 7:24. 

85 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

man does not feel his poverty if he has no 
love for money; as he does not feel his 
ignorance if he has no love for knowledge ; 
as he does not feel the wretchedness of his 
illness if he has no longing for health, so 
no man knows the wretchedness of the man 
of this text except one who loves right- 
eousness which he finds himself unable to 
practice. 

Paul's way of escape from such wretch- 
edness is clear. It is not in the conscious- 
ness of having already escaped from his 
bondage that one finds relief from his 
wretchedness, but in the consciousness that 
he is escaping, that he is emerging, that he 
is growing out of the thing he hates into 
the thing that he loves. We do not speak 
of the man who is very ill as "in a 
wretched condition'' when he is recover- 
ing, nor of the man as "wretchedly poor" 
who is growing rich, nor of one as "wretch- 
edly ignorant ' ' who is being educated, nor 
of one as "in a wretched state of imprison- 
ment" in the mine while upon his ear falls 
the music of the pick of those who are dig- 
ging him out. So, however imperfect a 
man may be, his is not a state of wretched- 
ness if he realizes that he is being deliv- 
ered from it, and that ultimately he is to be 
perfectly freed. If he is conscious that he 

86 



TEUTHS THAT SAVE 

is forgiven and approved and certain to be 
perfected, he may well speak of himself as 
one who is filled with joyful anticipation. 

Oh, happy man that he is, who is con- 
scious that the Spirit of God in him is 
leading him out of moral darkness into 
moral light, out of moral weakness into 
moral power, who has daily evidence that 
the law of the Spirit of God is making him 
free from the law of sin and death ! 



XIII 
THE SAVING TOUCH 1 

She touched the hem of his garment. 
She touched that which was in touch with 
one who was in touch with God. She had 
no doubt of Jesus' union with God at the 
time when she touched his garment. What 
was the result to her? A mighty change. 
We may not know exactly what it was, 
but it was such a change as would come to 
a woman who fully believed that she was 
touching one who was in touch with God. 
Such faith as hers will open the door for 
Jesus to share with her the health that is 
in his soul. It was an easy thing for her 

1 Luke 8 : 44. 

87 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

to do, far easier for her just then to touch 
one who was in touch with God than for 
her to touch God Himself immediately. 

Does it seem to you incredible that such 
a touch as hers should mean so much to 
her? There is no reason why it should 
seem so. Touch a wire that is in touch 
with electricity and what will be the result? 
Touch a garment that is in touch with one 
who has been in touch with a contagious 
disease and who doubts that the result may 
be that you will take the disease itself of 
the one whose garments you touched? 
Touch a substance in touch with fire and you 
will feel the fire itself. Do not these illustra- 
tions give you some faith in the blessed 
truth that to come in touch with any one 
who is in touch with God may mean to 
come in touch with God Himself, and to re- 
ceive from Him something of his nature 
of righteousness and truth and love and 
health and power? To touch that which 
is pure is as surely purifying as to touch 
that which is cold is surely chilling. To 
take into one's mind a word coming from 
another mind that is filled with the Spirit 
of God is to feel something of the Spirit 
of God. Oh, you who are unable as yet to 
come to God directly, get in touch with 
some one who is in touch with Him, 

88 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

through whom God can impart to you what 
you need from His loving hand. 

Remember that God is love, and that one 
who is in touch with God is full of love for 
man. It was this love in Jesus that might- 
ily affected all who came in touch with the 
Master. If, like Him, we would help those 
who touch us we have only to share with 
him his experience of the love of God for 
men. 



XIV 

FIELDS WHITE FOR THE 
HARVEST * 

These are fields that were seen only by 
Jesus, fields which the disciples who were 
present with him utterly overlooked, fields 
for which it was hard to find laborers, and 
yet fields that were all ready to be har- 
vested. What fields are these to which 
Jesus makes special reference in this text? 
They are fields of human beings like the 
Samaritan woman whom he had just saved 
from her life of uncleanness. She was a 
woman who had had five husbands and was 
then living with a man not her husband. 

1 John 4: 35. 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

There are fields of women like her in all of 
our cities, for whom little hope of recovery 
is felt, even by the church itself; persons 
who are neglected, so far as any intelligent 
and spiritual effort is concerned looking 
toward their recovery to a life of purity. 

"Lift up your eyes," Jesus says, "and 
see the multitudes, the fields of such persons 
who are perishing because the saving grace 
of God's holy love is not brought to their 
rescue. There are fields of drunkards stag- 
gering through life into the drunkard's 
grave, for the most part overlooked, even 
by those who are disciples of Jesus, but 
who lack his vision of the salvability of 
such persons. There are fields of thieves, 
in our prisons and out of them, without any 
one to save them from their selfish mo- 
tive, and so from their dishonest lives. 
There are those fields, not in far-away 
Africa, or India, but right within eyesight, 
if we would only lift up our eyes and see 
them, "fields white unto the harvest," in 
the sense of being in a condition to be 
saved at once, and yet fields that are over- 
looked by those who should gather them, or 
that are despaired of by those who should 
have hope of saving them. 

Pray that such laborers as Jesus be sent 
into these fields, — men who, like the Master, 

90 



TEUTHS THAT SAVE 

have the power of God in themselves with 
which to enlighten and empower such per- 
sons to forsake their sins. Such laborers 
as Jesus are few indeed, men having such 
power to save drunkards, thieves and har- 
lots. Only God can send such men to save, 
since it is only as one has His love, as 
Christ had it, that one will be able to see 
and convince men of their sins and lead 
them to forsake them. 



XV 
WELLS WITHOUT WATER 1 

Wells without water have nothing in 
them to satisfy the thirst of man, and are 
disappointing to the expectations created 
by their name and appearance. Wells 
without water — a form only of the thing 
promised and desired. How many of such 
wells there are in the world! 

There are churches that fulfill this figure. 
Thirsty souls come to them for the water 
of life, clear as crystal from the throne of 
God, but find it not. Souls thirsty for God 's 
love, for God's peace, for God's power, 
for God's fellowship, are painfully disap- 

* 2 Peter 2 : 17. 

91 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

pointed when they seek the satisfaction of 
their spiritual thirst for these things in 
many of our churches. I am afraid that 
many of our sermons are wells without 
water. The one thing lacking in them is 
water, and this is keenly felt by those who 
seek in them that which shall satisfy their 
thirst. ' ' Oh, yes, it was a beautiful sermon. 
It was a good sermon. It was a true 
enough sermon. It interested the people 
sufficiently, but I am just as spiritually 
thirsty as I was before I heard it." It 
was a well without water. 

What is true of the church and of the 
sermon is too largely true of Christians, 
every one of whom ought to be a well of 
water springing up into eternal life. So 
Jesus Christ declared. A man thirsting 
for the Spirit of God should find that Spirit 
in every man who bears the name of Jesus. 
Persons hungering for the fruit of the 
Spirit — love, righteousness, humility, gen- 
tleness, peace, joy, should find those in the 
life of the man who professes to share 
Christ's experience of God. But how 
many of us are forced to confess that too 
much of the time, at least, we are wells 
without the water of life — the Spirit of the 
living God? 

Most of our charity societies, I am! 

92 



TKUTHS THAT SAVE 

afraid, are wells without water. They 
have very little of sympathy and love and 
God in their work. Those who come to 
them in their hours of deepest need and 
trouble find some material relief, but very 
little if any of that Spirit of God, which is 
the bread and water of life. The text is 
a fertile one and the preacher whose eyes 
fall upon it will know how to expand it, 
how to apply it, so that his hearers shall 
unite with him in seeking to so embody the 
love of God in their individual lives that 
each shall be a well of love springing up 
into eternal life. 

the people everywhere are so thirsty 
for love, for such pure love as Christ was 
filled with, for such love as things past or 
present or future cannot rob one of. It is 
solely because such love is seen in Christ 
that all men are drawn to him. I repeat 
that the thing in Christ that has drawn 
men of all classes to him, and that will yet 
cause all knees to bow in worship of Him, 
is his love for all men. Souls thirsty for 
love find it in him, as a well of water ever 
springing up into eternal life. 



93 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 
XVI 

HOW THREE THOUSAND MEN 
WERE SAVED 1 

"And they were pricked in their 
hearts"; and as the result, they were all 
brought to repentance of their sins and to 
a true conversion to God. Their motive 
was converted and the result of their 
change of motive was a similar change of 
life. 

What was it about Peter's sermon that 
converted three thousand hardened, 
blinded men — men who had consented to 
the crucifixion of Jesus Christ? What 
pricked such men in their hearts? It was 
Peter's way of preaching the cross of 
Christ. It was not the way the cross is 
usually preached. He did not say that 
Christ's death satisfied the justice of God 
and made it possible for Him to pardon 
the sinners. He said, — You killed the Lord, 
desiring a murderer in his stead. You are 
guilty of the blood of Jesus and your sin 
against him is all the greater because it 
was a sin against pure love. You struck 
at one whose whole life was spent in doing 
good, who gave you no cause whatever for 
your attack upon him. There is, therefore, 

* Acts 2: 37. 

94 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

no possible excuse for your sin of nailing 
him to the accursed tree. Never mind what 
good God may bring out of your evil deed ; 
that will not in the least free you from 
your guilt. 

Under such preaching, men were pricked 
in the heart and brought to a true repent- 
ance. I know, Peter added, that you knew 
not what you did, but now that you do 
know the significance of your act and the 
motive that inspired it, it is your duty to 
repent and be converted. 

"I shall not attempt to relate your sin 
to the crucifixion of Jesus two thousand 
years ago," I said to a young man, " since 
it might be difficult to make you see such 
a distant connection. I want you to see 
your sin in its effects upon your sacred 
mother and your preacher father and 
others who, because of their love for you, 
are filled with sorrow and pain whenever 
they think of you. You don't want it to 
be so, but you can't help it, the one who 
loves you most must suffer most, on ac- 
count of your sinful life. The saloon- 
keeper does not care that you are down 
and out, but your mother does. He who 
sold you the drink would not be pricked 
to the heart if he should know that you 
were starving. Neither would the boys, 

95 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

for the most part, who drink with you ; but 
your mother — her suffering for you is pro- 
portionate to her love for you. For five 
years you have had your heel on her brow. 
You have been drinking her blood; and 
your preacher father has had the joy and 
strength of his ministry taken away by his 
memory of his failure to save his own son ; 
and that beautiful girl who was hoping to 
become your wife lives on with a broken 
heart because of your selfishness in unfit- 
ting yourself for the sacred relationship 
with you which you had invited her to 
share." 

And he was so pricked to the heart that 
he repented on the spot and sought, then 
and there, God's help, so that from that 
day, Nov. 10, 1911, he has not touched a 
drop of drink. He has taken the pain out 
of his mother's and father's hearts and has 
made a happy home for the girl who had 
given him up because of his intemperance. 



XVII 
THE SUPREME TEST OF LOVE 1 

Notice under what circumstances Jesus 
asked Peter for an, expression of his love. 

1 John2:15. 

96 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

It was not until Jesus, himself, had given 
the utmost expression of his own love for 
his disciples. Not until after Jesus had 
died for Peter did he ask Peter the ques- 
tion, "Lovest thou me?" His example 
here is to be followed by all who ask love 
from others, the example of one who plants 
tlu: love that he wishes to reap. He does 
not ask for a return for a love which he 
has not given. 

Jesus questioned the love of Peter. It 
is a question, he said, whether you love me 
even now, after all the love that I have 
bestowed upon you. The fact that you say 
that you love me does not prove that you 
do. You said you loved me before, suf- 
ficiently to lay down your life for me, and 
yet within a few hours you fulfilled my pre- 
diction that you would thrice deny me. 
Your profession of love is open to ques- 
tion, to serious question. 

Yes, Jesus had reason to question the 
love for him of his foremost disciple. I 
wonder if there is not now a question in his 
mind as to whether we love him or not, we, 
who like Peter, are his disciples and have 
said that he is so precious to us that we 
would rather die than fail to prove our 
love for him. 

Three times Jesus challenged Peter's 

97 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

love, as many times as Peter had denied 
him. And now I have come to the deep 
significance of this questioning by Jesus of 
Peter's love, — the proof that Jesus de- 
manded of the genuineness of the love 
which Peter professed for him. "Lovest 
thou me more than these ?" Jesus asked. 
More than the nets and fishes? No, that 
was not what Jesus meant, for Peter, on 
the occasion of his first meeting with Jesus, 
was quite ready to leave his nets and fishes, 
that he might become one of his followers. 
What Jesus questioned was whether now 
Peter was prepared to say that he loved 
Jesus more than he loved any of Jesus ' dis- 
ciples. Jesus demands of Peter the supreme 
proof of his love for him, and that proof 
is that he show his love for his Master in 
loving his Master's disciples. If you love 
me, Jesus said, prove it by feeding my 
sheep. There is no other evidence of your 
love for me that will satisfy my demand. 
All your professions of love for me will 
count for nothing until you prove your love 
for me by expressing it in loving service 
for my disciples. 

Jesus evidently didn't feel that Peter 
understood this teaching, for he immedi- 
ately repeated His question, "Lovest thou 
me?" and again said, prove your love for 

98 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

me by feeding my lambs. After that there 
still seemed a question in the mind of Jesus 
as to whether Peter was prepared to prove 
his love in this manner, as to whether his 
love for him would bear this test, and so he 
said to him again, "Lovest thou me?" If 
you do, I tell you again the thing that you 
do not seem to understand yet, that I shall 
question your love as long as it fails to 
express itself in love for my disciples, that 
no profession of your love for me will 
count for anything until it is confirmed by 
such love for my disciples as alone proves 
the genuineness of your love for me. ' i For 
by this shall all men know that you are 
my disciples, that ye have love one for 
another. ' 9 

When we bring our professed love for 
Christ to this supreme test is there not in 
our own souls a question as to whether 
we truly love him? And is it not necessary 
that in all of our pulpits this voice of Christ 
should be heard, in season and out of sea- 
son, in what may seem to be wearisome 
repetitiousness, insisting upon the fact to 
which most of our people seem to be as 
blind as Peter was blind to it, — that there 
can be no true love for Christ except in 
that love for him which manifests itself 
and proves itself in loving ministries to his 

99 



TBUTHS THAT SAVE 

sheep and lambs, to all those whom he 
loves. 

If we love Christ more than we love 
those whom he loves, so that we would do 
for him what we would not do for them, 
then for love of him we will serve them. 
For we must manifest our love for one by 
doing what he most desires us to do. And 
what Christ most wants us to do is to love 
men as he loves them. And if, because we 
love him more than others, we serve others 
for his sake, we shall come, through such 
service to men whom we do not love, to 
kindle in their hearts a love for us that 
shall kindle in us love for them. 



XVIII 

GARMENTS SPOTTED BY THE 
FLESH x 

Infected garments are more dangerous 
than the diseased flesh itself. Many will 
touch or wear the garments who would not 
touch the evil with which they are spotted. 
First, there is the spotted book. In the 
main, it is pure, but there are spots in its 
suggestions of evil. Such books are deadly, 
contaminating all who touch them. And 

1 Jude23. 

100 



TEUTHS THAT SAVE 

yet the people are, for the most part, eager 
to read them, not realizing the damage they 
are receiving from contact with such books, 
as they take their spotted thoughts into 
their minds to be turned into words and 
deeds. 

Then there is the spotted speech of men 
whose words are tainted with unclean 
thoughts. Some of our newspapers are 
garments spotted by the flesh. In connec- 
tion with the presentation of the news of 
the day they print details of vice and crime 
that stain the soul of the reader. 

Then there is the theater. Many plays, 
and especially musical comedies, are 
spotted by the flesh. They are purposely 
written so as to be suggestive of evil. 

Then there are memories of past sins, 
that are very deadly garments, spotted by 
the flesh. They bring back scenes and evi- 
dences of a sinful life. There is only one 
way of escaping such memories, and that is 
pointed out in the text, in which it is en- 
joined upon us that we hate the garments 
that are spotted by the flesh. So long as 
we take that attitude toward them, they 
are absolutely without power to harm us. 
Impure memories may come into a man's 
mind and leave no stain upon his character, 
so long as he takes the attitude of hatred 

101 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

toward them. And what is true of memo- 
ries is true of every garment spotted by 
the flesh. If we are brought into contact 
with them in any way and take toward 
them the attitude of mind suggested by the 
writer of this text, we shall escape all in- 
jury from them. 



XIX 

CLEANSED BY A WORD 1 

"Now ye are clean through the word 
which I have spoken unto you." How 
clean that man must be whose words 
cleanse those who hear them, filling their 
minds with his thoughts, — for a man's soul 
goes into his words ! They are his seeds. 
Through them he reproduces himself in 
all who receive them. He wraps himself 
up in his words. If he is unclean, then he 
must say to those who hear and receive his 
words, Now are ye unclean because of the 
words that I have spoken unto you. If he 
is impatient, then he must say to those who 
hear his words and receive them, Now are 
ye impatient because of the word that I 
have spoken unto you. If he is jealous, 
then he must say to the one receiving his 

^John 15:3. 

102 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

word and being influenced by it, Now are 
ye jealous through the word that I have 
spoken unto you, or if his word is a word 
of hate, then he must say to the one who 
comes under its influence, yielding himself 
to its thought, Now are you filled with 
hatred because of the word I have spoken 
unto you. 

The words of Christ are manifestations 
of Christ. His mind was so clean that he 
could take one of his thoughts and wrap it 
up in a word and put it into another mind 
and say, "Now you are clean through the 
word which I have spoken unto you. ' - Be- 
cause his mind was so pure as to refuse to 
consent to lustful thought, he could purify 
with his word those who received it. I 
think nothing so glorifies Jesus as knowl- 
edge of his word. 

If one would be clean let him fill his mind 
with clean words. Try and see if they do 
not make you clean. If one would be 
strong let him fill his mind with the 
thoughts of being strong. If one would 
have more love let him feed his love on the 
love of others. Oh, the power of clean 
words to purify a corrupt mind. Some of 
us know what it is to say, Now we are clean 
through the clean words by which we have 
expelled unclean thoughts. 

103 



Truths that save 

XX 

GET RIGHT WITH MEN FIRST * 

Leave thy gift at the altar. Before you 
seek harmonious relations with God, seek 
harmonious relations with men. The text 
represents a man as reversing this order, 
as bringing his gift to the altar of God, 
seeking fellowship with Him at a time when 
he was responsible for his own estrange- 
ment from a brother man. With his rela- 
tions wrong toward man, he imagined that 
he could yet have right relations with his 
Heavenly Father, that he could get right 
with God without getting right with man, 
that he could be at peace with God while he 
was responsible for being at strife with 
man. Perhaps he thought that after he 
had entered into harmonious relations with 
God, he would seek such relations with 
man. He thought that the thing for him to 
do was first to get right with God; after 
that, to get right with the man whom he 
had wronged. If so, Jesus pointed out his 
mistake when he said, " Leave your gift at 
God's altar, unoffered, until you have 
taken the necessary steps to secure recon- 
ciliation with the man from whom you are 

» Matt. 5 : 22-24. 

104 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

estranged. Then come, seeking reconcilia- 
tion with God." 

Here is a truth that should be pro- 
claimed from every pulpit and brought, so 
far as possible, to the attention of every 
living man. For the old error is still with 
us, that a man can have right relations 
with God though his relations with men are 
wrong. Across the ocean we see startling 
illustrations of this terrible delusion. Be- 
fore entering into battle to slay one an- 
other, armies celebrate the Mass or engage 
in some other form of worship of God. 
They imagine that their relations with 
God are right while their relations with 
one another are cruelly, desperately 
wrong. They bring their gifts to God's 
altar While they are murdering His chil- 
dren. 

What a change there would be in 
Christendom — a change beyond the power 
of imagination to conceive, if those who 
bear the name of Christ would actually 
listen to the teaching of this text and ob- 
serve the order which is here indicated! 
What if all Christians, before coming to 
God's altar, should do all in their power 
to secure the relationship of love with one 
another! Here is a religion that would 
save the world. Obedience to this single 

105 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

word of Christ would go far toward puri- 
fying the world from all sin. Until it is 
obeyed, religion will have no power to per- 
fect social, political and national relation- 
ships. 

To you men of Church House, this word 
comes with peculiar emphasis, for many of 
you have come from homes desolated by 
your sins of intemperance, dishonesty and 
impurity. Do not imagine that you can 
secure the approval of God until you do 
what you need to, to secure the approval of 
those wives and mothers and children 
whom you have so cruelly wronged. Do 
not imagine that in God's name we shall 
release you from responsibility for mak- 
ing the wrong things of your lives right, 
or that we shall pronounce His blessing 
upon you, until you do so. 

Before you come to God's altar seeking 
His pardon and asking His approval, dedi- 
cate yourself to the work of seeking har- 
monious relations with all those from whom 
your sins have estranged you. Unless you 
do that, all your seeking for God's favor 
will be in vain. No gift that you can bring 
to His altar will count for anything until 
you go and make your peace with those 
against whom you have sinned. Go tonight, 
in the purpose of your soul to do so sol- 

106 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

emnly registered before your conscience in 
the presence of God. When God sees such 
a purpose in your soul, He will impute to 
you the thing that you have consecrated 
yourself to do, and will give you His peace. 
Grace, mercy and peace from God you 
cannot have so long as you are neglecting 
to fulfill your sacred obligations to men. 



XXI 
WATCH YOUR THOUGHTS 1 

There is a play entitled " Watch Your 
Step." I want to write some notes on — 
watch your thoughts. Formerly thoughts 
came down the street of my soul and en- 
tered into my mind just as they pleased. I 
did not select them with the care with 
which I now do. They entered in at their 
pleasure, stayed as long as they pleased 
and did what they wished. The result was 
days of depression and other evils that re- 
sulted from such indiscriminate thinking. 
Now when thoughts approach my mind, I 
am on my guard concerning them and se- 
lect, with prayerful care, those which I 
wish to entertain. Many I reject utterly, 

l Pbil. 4 : 8. 

107 



TEUTHS THAT SAVE 

as soon as they make their approach, for 
I know them perfectly as thoughts that 
mean depression of spirit, irritation of 
temper, and evil works. These I make 
passing thoughts, and I hurry their going 
as much as possible. Sometimes they get 
into my mind unawares, but as soon as I 
discover their presence I refuse to enter- 
tain them and they are expelled. 

Jesus has a great deal to say on this sub- 
ject. He cautions us about fruitless think- 
ing about things that cannot be altered, 
foolish thinking about the things of the 
past that we should dismiss utterly, but 
which we keep with us with their depres- 
sions and temptations to sin; fearful 
thoughts of the future that fill us with 
miserable apprehensions of things that for 
the most part never come, sorrowful 
thoughts of sins forgiven that we will not 
dismiss from our minds, thoughts of past 
mistakes, all sorts of evil thoughts, profit- 
less thoughts, that we consent to enter- 
tain, in our heedlessness, perhaps, of the 
evils they are doing. As the Apostle says 
in this text, we ought to select such 
thoughts as are true, honorable, just, pure, 
lovely and of good report. 

But a man says to me, "I seem not to 
have any power over my thinking. For 

103 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

days impure thoughts have filled my mind, 
absolutely against my will, and much to 
my pain. Why do such thoughts arise in 
my mind, and why is it so difficult to expel 
them ? " " What have you been reading J ' 9 
I asked. And when he told me of his re- 
cent mental companions I knew the secret 
of his unclean thoughts. "You have been 
putting into your mind the thoughts that 
come up there.' ' Such thoughts let in 
through the ear and the eye multiply very 
fast. If you would free yourself from 
them you must turn away from all that 
breeds them — and you must crowd them 
out of your mind by keeping it filled with 
pure thoughts. 



XXH 

BARABBAS OR JESUS? 1 

Pilate left it to the people to choose 
which of these men should be released, and 
they made their choice knowing well that 
the death of one meant the life of the 
other, that to send one to the cross meant 
to free the other from the experience of 
that horrible death ; And the people unan- 
imously chose Barabbas. 

1 Matt. 27 : 17. 

109 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

The contrast between these men is the 
contrast between light and darkness, be- 
tween the best of men and the worst of 
men. Every instinct of those who chose 
Barabbas should have led them to choose 
Jesus. For his own sake they should have 
chosen him, since he was entitled to his 
life, while Barabbas had, by sin, sacrificed 
his right to live. Jesus was worthy of the 
life of which Barabbas was unworthy. 
They should have chosen Jesus for their 
own sakes, since he was their friend and 
could bring them into harmonious relation- 
ships with God, while Barabbas was one 
whose influence and example must prove 
harmful to them if they liberated him and 
associated with him. 

How, under the circumstances, are we to 
account for the fact that the people chose 
Barabbas rather than Jesus? Did they do 
so in ignorance of the character of these 
two men? No, for they made their choice 
after both Jesus and Barabbas had made 
records clearly revealing what they were, 
after Barabbas had been justly con- 
demned, and Jesus had been tried and de- 
clared by Pilate to be without fault. . 

I emphasize this fact that this choice 
was made after both men had made their 
records. For, like them, we are daily 

1X0 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

called to choose between all that Jesus rep- 
resents and all that Barabbas stands for, 
and these things between which we have to 
choose have all made their records, which 
are known to us and should determine our 
choice of one rather than the other. Sel- 
fishness has made its record — -a record of 
crime and pain and death. No good thing 
can be said of it. It stands convicted as a 
robber, a murderer of men. It is Barab- 
bas. It ought to die. The world would be 
turned into a very paradise if it should 
die. There is no hope of heaven until it 
does die. 

Love, holy love, love such as Jesus em- 
bodied, has also made its record, and by 
its fruits it may be known. There is no 
evil in it. Even the most cruel Pilate will 
bear witness to the fact that Jesus is 
worthy of life. The motive of his life will 
perfect the race as God is perfect if it 
should reign in all hearts ; And yet just as 
the people chose Barabbas after they had 
come to know his record, rather than Jesus 
whose record they also knew, so men now 
choose a selfish motive rather than a mo- 
tive of love; choose to be ruled by their 
passions rather than by their virtues; 
choose to be governed by appetites rather 
than by -ideals ; choose carnal nature rather 

111 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

than spiritual nature. We must choose to 
be ruled by one or the other of these na- 
tures, and the choice of one means the 
death of the other. The Jews chose Barab- 
bas rather than Jesus, because they had 
come to hate Jesus on account of the re- 
straint he imposed upon them in the exer- 
cise of their sinful lusts and unholy pas- 
sions. Barabbas they knew would not thus 
restrain them in their sinful living and 
they chose him because their deeds were 
evil. 

But thanks be to God their choice of 
Barabbas was not their final choice. 
Many of them soon saw that they had 
chosen Barabbas in blindness to their own 
interests, and they reversed their choice. 
Is it not true of many of you, tonight, that 
you are prepared to choose the pure and 
blessed life of the Son of God? He will 
give Himself to you when you choose Him. 



XXIII 
SAVED FROM WITHIN x 

"Have salt in your self/ ' If a man is 
to be saved, he must have in himself that 

1 Mark 9 : 50. 

112 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

which shall save him. Being with those 
who are pure will not make him pure in 
whose heart an impure motive dwells. A 
person may remain in increasing selfish- 
ness while in the closest possible associa- 
tion with those of growing unselfishness. 
The change that regenerates a man's con- 
duct must be a change of motive — it is the 
change that occurs within a man that 
makes the change in his outer life real and 
permanent. Hence, the insistence of Jesus 
upon the new birth of a man's spirit as pre- 
ceding the change of his life. Have in 
yourselves that which shall hold in check 
the corrupt tendencies of your nature; 
have salt, the salt of God's holy love, for 
your fellow men in yourselves if you 
would be saved from sinning against them. 
Have light in yourselves. The light of 
the example of others will mean little to 
one who has not the light of their lives in 
his own heart. See things for yourselves, 
if you would be sure of them. Have the 
witness of the truth in your own reason 
and conscience. Do not rest your faith 
upon external authority but upon your 
own personal understanding and ex- 
perience of it. Have a spring of water in 
yourselves. You cannot satisfy your thirst 
for God with others' experiences of Him. 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

You must drink of the water of life fresh 
from the fountain, if your thirst is to be 
satisfied, and your spiritual experience 
must be an abiding one, if it is to be satis- 
fying. Past experiences of God will not 
satisfy present thirst for Him. Have root 
in yourselves; "because they had no root 
in themselves they withered away." We 
must have a deep, true, abiding faith in 
God as love if we are to maintain our faith 
in him against all that would detach us 
from him. "Kooted in love" means such 
a faith in love, such a worship of love, such 
an appreciation of the value of love as 
makes it impossible for anything past or 
present or future to separate us from it. 
We have to cling to love as the roots of a 
tree cling to the soil, if love is to have its 
perfecting work in us, protecting us from 
every temptation and developing in us 
every grace of God's holy character. We 
have to make love our one foundation upon 
which everything in our life rests, if love 
is to fulfill its perfecting work in us. Oh, 
that we may have in us this one thing that 
is salt, light, water, root, — the love of God 
as revealed in Jesus Christ our Lord. 



114 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

XXIV 

CHRIST'S PRATER FOR PETER 1 

"I prayed for thee that thy faith fail 
not." Peter believed that he was able to 
follow Jesus even unto the death. He had 
not the slight doubt that he would rather 
die than deny his Master, but Jesus knew 
better. "Before the cock crows you will 
deny me thrice." Jesus knew that in the 
time of trial Peter's faith would be in dan- 
ger of failing, that after such an experi- 
ence of weakness in the face of temptation, 
the Apostle would doubt that he would ever 
be able to conquer it, that he would lose 
faith in his ability to fulfill his purpose to 
follow his Master. This is what Jesus had 
in mind when he said, "I have prayed that 
thy faith fail not." He was not thinking 
of any failure of Peter's faith in him as 
the Son of God, but of Peter's failure of 
faith in his own ability to follow his Mas- 
ter, to do the thing that he had tried so 
long and so often, in vain, to do, that after 
he had failed, wretchedly failed, in his ef- 
forts to follow Jesus, he would lose faith 
in his power ever to do so. Jesus knew 
that such loss of faith would prove abso- 

1 Luke 22 : 32. 

115 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

lutely fatal to his disciple, knew that if he 
lost his faith that he could follow him, it 
would never be possible for him to do so. 
And so Jesus said, "I prayed that thy 
faith fail not," after you have thrice ex- 
perienced failure to do what you felt sure 
you could do. And the Lord's prayer was 
answered. For Peter's faith that he could 
yet win out in following his Lord's exam- 
ple did not utterly fail him. Rather, it 
grew stronger and at last gave him the 
power he needed to do the thing that he 
had so often failed in doing, so that he 
finally gloriously followed Jesus even unto 
the death of the cross. Jesus knew that 
Peter could not be saved until he had gone 
forth in his sin, that he would have to re- 
peat his sin until he came to hate it as he 
saw its effects upon his Master. 

So it is with men whom we are unable to 
hold up from drink and other evils until 
they have experienced their misery suf- 
ficiently, as they have seen its results in the 
lives of those who have suffered on account 
of it, and have experienced it in their own 
increasing suffering on account of it. But 
there is hope for a man, no matter how 
often or how low he may have fallen, so 
long as his faith does not fail, so long as 
he believes that he can succeed. 

116 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

It is a blessed fact that most evil men 
still believe they can overcome the sin by 
which they have been thrown. Their re- 
peated failures to overcome have not re- 
sulted in their utter loss of faith that they 
will ultimately conquer. That is a wonder- 
ful thing, which we can account for only on 
the ground that God keeps their faith alive. 
That is what Jesus meant when He said, 
"I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail 
not." The knowledge that his Master's 
faith in him had not failed, and that God's 
faith in him had not failed, and that Jesus 
in God's name had predicted ultimate suc- 
cess in the thing wherein he had so fright- 
fully and repeatedly failed, helped to keep 
Peter's faith from failing. Jesus, who 
had predicted his temporary failure, had 
also predicted his ultimate success. 

What a mighty inspiration it is to a 
feeble man to know that God believes in 
him, that the God who knows his weakness 
also knows His possibilities of so strength- 
ening him against it as to give him the suc- 
cess for which he would otherwise despair. 
How it does save one, how it does inspire 
one to believe that he may yet overcome 
that which has up to this time overcome 
him, when he knows that God believes that 
he can overcome it. Remember this, how- 

117 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

ever, that the man whose faith did not fail 
was the man whose purpose to follow 
Christ was sincere. So long as one sin- 
cerely desires any good thing of God, his 
faith in the possibility of its achievement 
will not fail, however often his weakness 
may defeat him. 

I hope and trust that no drunkard in this 
congregation has lost all faith that he is to 
be a sober man, that no dishonest man, 
however often he may have been overcome 
by his fault or imprisoned by it, doubts that 
he can still be an honest man, that no 
woman whose character has been damaged 
has lost faith that she can be whiter than 
snow. I humbly hope and trust and dare 
to believe that you will yet overcome the 
temptations that have hitherto overcome 
you, by the power of the God who is willing 
to help you and who, because He knows His 
help will be amply sufficient, has perfect 
faith that you will yet be made whole. 



XXV 
FATAL IGNORANCE x 

There is one thing these men did not 
know and their ignorance proved their 

* Matt. 25: 44. 

118 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

ruin. They did not know that they had 
neglected to serve God in their neglect to 
serve men. I say they did not understand 
this tremendous fact that none of their re- 
ligious beliefs or forms of worship could 
give them a particle of fellowship with God 
so long as they did not serve Him by serv- 
ing men. 

So today there are multitudes of Chris- 
tians who think they are serving God when 
they are reading what they regard as His 
word, or are praying to Him, or are listen- 
ing to sermons about Him, or are attempt- 
ing to believe something that is taught to 
them concerning Him. They imagine that 
they are in fellowship with God while they 
are refusing to even so much as look at 
some of His humble disciples, much less to 
feed them, visit them, care for them. 
Their religion can never cleanse or perfect 
them. 

Jesus was always seeking to make men 
see that they served God only as they 
served men. Priest and Levite did not see 
that their worship of God should have been 
shown by help to the wounded man whom 
they both passed on their way home from 
church. Dives did not see that he must 
serve Lazarus if he would have fellowship 
with Abraham in his fellowship with God. 

119 



TEUTHS THAT SAVE 

The nations at war see nothing incon- 
sistent with their professed worship of 
God in their fiendish treatment of men and 
women. Our churches are full of persons 
guilty of the sin charged against the men 
of my text who, while they prayed and 
fasted and observed the outward forms of 
worship of God, utterly failed to serve God 
by serving His needy children. Oh, that in 
some way our pulpits might make this 
truth known to the world! 



XXVI 

» 

THE EFFECT OF A LOOK 1 

It was wrought by a single look of 
Christ. "And when the Lord looked upon 
Peter, he went out and wept bitterly. ' ' It 
was the look of one against whom Peter 
had sinned without the least possible ex- 
cuse, the look of one whom Peter's sin had 
involved in deep suffering. It is not 
pleasant to look into the face of an inno- 
cent loved one who knows that we have 
been false to his interests, of one who loves 
us, whose heart we have broken ; for a man 
to look upon a woman whose life he has 

1 Luke 22: 62. 

120 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

ruined; for a husband to look into the face 
of a patient, suffering wife for whose suf- 
fering he is responsible; for a son to see 
the countenance of a mother's look full of 
suffering, which he knows is the result of 
his sin of wounding her. Oh! Peter must 
have thought of the look that Jesus would 
have had for him that day if only he had 
been loyal to his Master, the look of tender 
fellowship and deeply appreciative grati- 
tude, instead of the look of suffering which 
he had caused. 

It is a beautiful thing to live so that our 
friends look into our eyes with joyful ap- 
proval, so that they have that look when 
we see them in picture, or imagination.. 
Oh, the joy we experience when we see in 
their countenance evidence that we have 
given them pleasure instead of pain ! Peter 
did not realize how his sin would pain 
Christ. He did not expect that Jesus 
would ever be effected by it. So we sin 
against the innocent, not knowing what 
they will suffer because of our sin. This 
is our mistake, as it was Peter's. Like 
him, we need to see the suffering that our 
sin has caused innocent hearts, and go out 
and weep bitterly, unto a deep repentance 
that shall result in a true conversion. And 
I am sure that every man here would re- 

121 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

pent of his sin if only he could see the suf- 
fering he has caused those whom he loves. 
And for that reason I ask you to think of 
the wives and mothers and others whose 
hearts are filled with pain when they think 
of you and of your sins against their love. 
Oh, while I speak, just now, look in imag- 
ination into the faces of those who love 
you most, who, for that reason, suffer 
most because of your suffering. Take the 
pain out of their hearts, filling them with 
joy instead, by doing what Peter did that 
night, when he forever forsook the sin that 
had made the one who loved him most suf- 
fer most. Change that pained look of your 
loved one into a look of joyful approval by 
giving yourself now to live the love of 
Christ — the life of love. God grant that 
the vision of the suffering face of some 
loved one may just now be used by God to 
lead you to repentance and life eternal. 



XXVII 
A NEW GOLDEN RULE 1 

We are to deal with men as God has 
dealt with us. We are to forgive as we 
*Johnl5:9. 

122 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

have been forgiven. We are to help as 
we have been helped. We are to love 
as we have been loved. As freely as we 
have received from God, we are to give to 
men. Here is a much more definite rule 
than the so-called Golden Rule. 

Let me illustrate its deep meaning from 
a recent personal experience. I had to 
deal with a man who had contradicted my 
sense of righteousness and truth and love 
to the very quick. It seemed almost in- 
credible that he should be recovered from 
his fallen condition. But that morning I 
had had an experience of an hour alone 
with God, during which time He had lifted 
up my ideals and purified my motive and 
enlightened my mind. I said, ' i I will spend 
as much time with my friend as God has 
spent with me, and I will attempt to do for 
him what God has done for me." Acting 
on this rule, it was simply amazing how the 
man responded as I dealt with him as 
nearly as I could in the spirit in which I 
had been dealt with by God. I could see 
his mind change until a deep, true repent- 
ance and faith were there, and then, as I 
prayed with him, the Spirit of God's love 
and truth came upon him, with the result 
that he was converted to God. And since 

123 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

then he has been reunited with his wife 
and is a real Christian. 

What the Spirit does for us directly, we 
must let Him do through us for those who 
need His help. This work cannot be done 
by us for others in any other way than the 
Spirit does it for us. 



XXVIII 
WHY PRAYER IS NECESSARY 1 

All of these verses relate to the subject 
of prayer. In the preceding chapter, Jesus 
tells His disciples that they must be sin- 
cere in their prayers and not like the Phar- 
isees, who pray hypocritically. In coming 
to God they are not to use vain repetitions, 
they are to remember that He knows what 
they need before they ask. Jesus says we 
are to ask God for His gifts. Why? Be- 
cause our asking is a sign that we desire 
what we ask, and that desire opens the 
door for God's gift. He cannot give to us 
even what He knows we need, so long as 
we do not sufficiently desire it. Jesus il- 
lustrates this fact in the sixth verse, where 
he says that we must not give that which is 

1 Matt. 7 : 6-12. 

124 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

holy to dogs, since they have no desire for 
it, no capacity to receive it, no discern- 
ment of its value or its proper use. We 
should not cast pearls before swine, since 
they would trample them under their feet 
and turn again and rend us. 

No matter how much a man needs a 
thing, we cannot so give it to him that it 
shall meet his need if he does not desire it. 
It is because asking is an expression of de- 
siring that God gives His spiritual gifts 
only as we ask them from Him. He can- 
not force them upon us. If He were to 
do so we should misuse His gifts and hate 
Him for compelling us to receive them. 
So, then, we must ask in faith and earnest 
desire for the things for which we pray. 
We must value them sufficiently before 
God can give them profitably to us. I won- 
der, oh, I wonder, how much we really do 
value the gifts of God for which we pray. 
Let us pause and ask ourselves this ques- 
tion. There is the absolute certainty of 
our receiving what we need from God when 
we ask with right desire, when we value it 
so highly that God can bestow it upon us. 

How much do we value the kingdom of 
God? Really is it to us the pearl of great 
price, for which we would give all that we 
possess in exchange? Do we seek fellow- 

125 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

ship with God as the merchantman sought 
the precious jewel? When we pray for the 
Holy Spirit, how much do we desire it? 
Do we so value it that we would gladly sur- 
render everything that stands in the way 
of its coming and of its fulfilling its pur- 
pose in our lives? 

There is no doubt about God's willing- 
ness to give good things to His children. 
If we who are evil will give good things 
to our children, how much more shall our 
Father in heaven, who is wholly good, give 
His Spirit to us? What God is indicates 
what He wills and what He may be ex- 
pected to give. If, therefore, He is holy 
love, there can be no possible ground for 
doubt that He will give every good thing, 
every needed thing, to every one of His 
children who may be in a condition to ap- 
preciate His gifts. 

I hope I have made perfectly plain to 
you why it is that petition must always 
form a part of prayer, why God gives in 
response to our asking, viz., because our 
asking is an expression of our desiring, 
which is a condition of our receiving. 



126 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

XXIX 

THE HOUR OF GOD'S 
OPPORTUNITY x 

"When my father and mother give me 
up, then the Lord will take me up." A 
new interpretation of this text came to me 
recently in connection with what seemed 
to be a well nigh hopeless case of a con- 
firmed drunkard. He is a man of intelli- 
gence, having many fine points of char- 
acter, but habitual drinking had become so 
fixed upon him that all of his people and 
friends had lost all hope that he would 
ever permanently escape from it. My own 
experience of months of fruitless efforts 
to save him had been such as to make me 
lose hope also. What can I do in a case 
where the love of a most devoted and 
beautiful wife has failed? What hope of 
success is there now in a case where the 
efforts for years of loved ones and friends 
have utterly failed? What hope is there 
now that the man's will power is weaker 
than ever, now that his self-respect is 
seemingly wholly gone, now when every- 
thing upon which we based our hope of 
saving a man seems to have been tested 

*Ps.27:10. 

127 



TEUTHS THAT SAVE 

and failed? What hope is there of success 
in any further effort that we may make for 
this man's recovery? 

These were about the thoughts that were 
in my mind when this text came, "Then 
the Lord shall take him up, ' ' meaning that 
when all others have given a man up and 
he has no hope of help from any source, he 
is most likely to give God an opportunity 
to help him. This is the hour of God's great 
opportunity, because it is the hour of the 
man's recognition of his absolute depend- 
ence upon God for help. 

I say the text took on this new meaning. 
Formerly, I had supposed it meant that 
God's love being so much more patient 
than a father and mother's might be ex- 
pected to continue after theirs had failed ; 
but now I saw the deeper meaning of the 
text as I have tried to word it. 

I went to the forsaken man and found 
that for the first time in all my knowledge 
of him he was in a state of mind to appre- 
ciate the love of one who came to him in 
the name of God. He recognized such love 
as a love transcending that of his devoted 
mother and of his devoted wife, and he was 
ready to believe that it was the love of God 
in the heart of the person who came to him, 

128 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

that now offered him help. And the Lord 
took him up, and he seems a new man. 

I call attention to his case as illustrating 
the meaning of our text, in the hope that 
others who seek to save the lost will under- 
stand that the time when they have most 
reason to hope for success in such work is 
when they find a man whom all others have 
forsaken in hopelessness of recovering him 
from his sin. When you find a man whose 
mother and father have forsaken him, be- 
lieve that you have found a man whom 
God, through you, may hope to lift up. 



XXX 
PETER MISREPRESENTING JESUS * 

The profound meaning in the account of 
the tribute money has been obscured by a 
single unbelievable feature connected with 
it. It is a case like that of Jonah and the 
whale, where the incredible miracle ele- 
ment in the story so takes up the reader's 
mind as to cause him to entirely lose sight 
of its great spiritual and moral meaning. 
It is so with all the miracle stories. The 
miracle element leads multitudes to cast 

1 Matt. 17 : 24-27. 

129 



TBUTHS THAT SAVE 

them wholly aside. "Does not your Mas- 
ter pay the half -shekel V 9 Peter was asked 
by a collector of the temple tax, and Peter 
unhesitatingly answered, "Yes." Peter 
felt fully prepared to answer this question 
as to what Jesus would do, without asking 
Jesus. It did not occur to the Apostle that 
he might misrepresent his Master if, with- 
out consulting him, he pledged him to pay 
the tax in question. He felt that he knew 
perfectly well what Jesus would say to a 
question like that. But Peter was mis- 
taken, and, as the result, he misrepresented 
Jesus' attitude toward the temple tax. 

Peter should have let Jesus speak for 
himself. His failure to do so has been 
repeated in all ages by those who have un- 
dertaken to speak for Jesus. They have 
made Jesus teach what he never referred 
to, if not what he absolutely denied. Men 
have answered religious questions in the 
name of Jesus without any authority from 
him to do so, and when a little thought con- 
cerning his character and mission would 
have made it impossible that they should 
misrepresent him by the answers that they 
have given. 

Does your Master pay this tax, Peter? 
"Yes," replies the thoughtless disciple. 
Did Jesus do this particular thing or teach 

130 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

this doctrine? We often answer for him 
without having the authority of his word, 
or example, or character, upon which to 
rest an answer. Oh, if Jesus had been per- 
mitted to speak for himself, the world 
would not be full of misrepresentations of 
his word and life ! 

Peter, I say, should have consulted Jesus 
before answering the question as to what 
Jesus would do in a case like that of the 
temple tax. It is a grievous sin against 
Jesus to attempt to speak in his name con- 
cerning matters which he has not spoken 
about, or in ignorance of what he has said 
or done that reveals his true answer to the 
questions involved. Notice the mistake 
that Peter made when he committed Jesus 
to the payment of the temple tax. The 
apostle did not see what that tax repre- 
sented and therefore he did not know what 
Jesus' attitude toward it must necessarily 
be. The tax was for the support of the 
temple worship. It was for the salvation 
of the soul of him who paid it. To Jesus, 
this tax was wholly inconsistent with the 
fact of his sonship to God. It involved a 
serious error as to man's relations to the 
Father. It assumed that he was not re- 
lated to God as his Son. Jesus brought out 
this truth by ths question — "Oh, thinkest 

131 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

thou, Simon, the kings of the earth, from 
whom do they receive tribute, from their 
sons or strangers, from those in the filial 
relationship or not?" When Peter had 
said, "Strangers," Jesus replied, "Then 
the sons are free." 

The teaching of Jesus here is this, that 
every son of God is free from all obliga- 
tions that contradict his relationship to 
God. And the whole temple service did 
this, and especially the temple tax which 
was paid to secure the favor of God. All 
the offerings of the temple, the whole Jew- 
ish ritual, was a direct contradiction of the 
fatherhood of God, and for that reason 
Jesus felt entirely free from all obligations 
to support or fulfill it. And this freedom 
he claimed not for himself only, but for all 
sons of God, as is evident from his saying, 
"Then were the sons (not son) free," and 
when, for another reason, Jesus consented 
to pay the tax, he charged Peter to pay it 
for both himself and his Master, indicating 
that if he was obligated to pay it, so was 
Peter, but that if he was free from the 
necessity of paying it, so was his apostle. 
We may be sure that as Peter misrepre- 
sented Jesus when he declared that his 
Master approved. of the temple tax, so we 
misrepresent him whenever we represent 

132 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

Jesus as teaching anything that contra- 
dicts his and our sonship to God. The 
Master's word is clear and conclusive that 
one is to believe and practice only that 
which is in perfect harmony with his rela- 
tionship to God as a son. 

As I have said, the whole temple service 
was a denial of this holy relationship. It 
was consistent with the conception of God 
as a king to whom man was a subject, but 
not a son. All sons of God are free to deny 
all that the church has taught that contra- 
dicts that relationship. If Peter had con- 
sidered the question of the temple tax in 
the light in which Jesus regarded it, he 
would have seen, as Jesus saw, that it was 
a tax that neither he nor his Master was 
at all required to pay. 

Note the difference here between Peter 
and Jesus with regard to this temple tax, 
and see why they differed so widely. The 
man who judges all things in the light of 
his relationship to God will differ widely 
in his religious teaching and practice with 
those who do not take the filial relationship 
into account! Our theory and morality 
are certain to be determined by our theol- 
ogy. If man is God's servant, then he is 
in a relationship to God wholly different in 
all respects from that in which one is whose 

133 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

God is his Father. In answering all ques- 
tions of faith and duty, we should consider 
them in relation to our sonship to God. I 
am free from all that contradicts that rela- 
tionship. 

So Christ put aside all the sacrificial 
ways of getting favor from God; so he 
came directly to God, not through a priest 
as a mediator, but as a son. Glorious truth, 
which we all need to learn, blessed freedom 
of the sons of God — free from all that con- 
tradicts the filial relationship, free to be- 
lieve and practice all that is in harmony 
with one's sonship to God. 

But while the follower of Jesus will 
never do evil to gain influence for good, he 
will abridge his liberty in doing what is 
entirely permissible when such abridgment 
of his liberty is essential to the manifesta- 
tion of his righteous motive. Hence, 
Jesus said to Peter, Though as a son I 
am free from all duty to pay the temple 
tax, yet, under the circumstances, I shall 
pay it. Only, I want you to know why I 
pay it, — not as a debt, nor an endorsement 
of the temple service, but for another and 
entirely different reason. I shall pay it, 
not because you, Peter, have said that I 
would pay it, — for I certainly shall not 
hold myself responsible to redeem all the 

134 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

pledges that may be made in my name by 
those who do not have my authority and 
are not guided by my Spirit. But I shall 
pay this tax, lest we cause the Jewish 
leaders to stumble. They will not under- 
stand, they cannot possibly understand, 
the ground on which we free ourselves 
from obligation to pay the tax, since they 
do not know our relationship to God that 
frees us from the necessity for paying it. 
The result of their ignorance, therefore, if 
we act on our freedom, will be an utter 
misunderstanding of our motive. It will 
seem to them that we are unwilling to meet 
a sacred obligation, and that will be made 
a cause of stumbling to many honest hearts 
to whom as yet the light of the truth of the 
filial relationship has not come. We must 
consider how the refusal to pay the temple 
tax will seem to those who cannot under- 
stand our reason for so doing. Our good 
will be evil spoken of. We must, for love's 
sake, therefore, deny ourselves the full lib- 
erty of all the privileges of our sonship to 
God. In living with those who are not in 
our spiritual relationship to God we have 
to consider how many things of our free- 
dom would appear to them if we should 
fully exercise it. We must not let our 
freedom become a stumblingblock to those 

135 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

who do not as yet understand its glorious 
nature. 

One who follows Jesus will judge all his 
obligations in the light of his sonship to 
God, but he will seek so far as possible not 
to violate the consciences of those with 
whom he is associated, who are not them- 
selves in the enjoyment of his relationship 
to God. He will do many things that he is 
not required to do, and he will leave un- 
done many things that he has the freedom 
to do, lest what he does or leaves undone 
prove a stumblingblock to those whom he 
wishes to lead into the liberty of his rela- 
tionship to God. 



XXXI 

MISDIRECTED ZEAL 1 

The sword stroke that severed the ear of 
Malchus is a case of misdirected zeal of 
the servants of Christ. Here is a case 
where a man who took his life in his hands 
to serve Jesus did more harm than good. 
What a deep disappointment it must have 
been to Peter to find that the blow he had 
struck for his Master had utterly failed of 
its purpose. 

'John 18: 10-11. 

136 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

Peter was always embarrassing Jesus by 
his lack of intelligence in his efforts to 
serve him, by his unintentional misrepre- 
sentations of him. We saw that in Peter's 
obligation of Jesus to pay a tax that Jesus 
could not pay as a debt. Peter was always 
making mistakes in his efforts to assist 
Jesus, and all of these mistakes came from 
the same cause, Peter's failure to under- 
stand the relationship of his Master to God 
and the nature of his mission in the world. 
If he had only known the mission of Jesus, 
it would have been possible for him to have 
had intelligent fellowship with his Master 
in all of his teaching and works. 

It is pitiful how much has been done by 
disciples of Jesus that has only served to 
misinterpret him and to hinder men from 
seeking and finding his Kingdom. Millions 
of men have followed the example of Peter 
in using wrong methods to serve their 
Master — methods he never used, methods 
that they would have seen to be the very 
contradiction of his motive if they had 
known his motive. It was quite natural 
that Peter should strike as he did, but it 
was harmful to Jesus to have him do so. 
Only harm to the cause of Christ could 
come from the method Peter used to pro- 
mote it. Two things Jesus said about 

137 



TEUTHS THAT SAVE 

Peter's act. He did not praise his zeal. 
He did not excuse his mistake. God, Jesus 
said, has not left me in dependence upon 
your feeble and utterly fruitless efforts to 
escape from crucifixion. If it were His 
will that I escape the mob, God would give 
me legions of angels. He would not leave 
me dependent for the fulfilment of His will 
upon utterly inadequate means. God could 
protect me if that were His will. 

It is thus of the utmost necessity that fol- 
lowers of Christ have a knowledge of the 
will of God. Then they will be spared the 
painful experience that came to Peter 
when he was made to realize that he blindly 
opposed the will of God in the very thing 
that he had done to promote it. 

And Jesus healed the wound that Peter 
had made. He undid what Peter had done. 
How much of such work God has to do in 
the world! How much of hay, wood and 
stubble we build on the good foundation. 
How much of what we teach and practice 
in the name of Christ contradicts that 
name! One who follows Christ should be 
most careful to have the Master's knowl- 
edge of the will of God so as to follow him 
intelligently. And we have all the more 
need for care in doing this since we cannot 
expect a miracle to be wrought to correct 

138 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

the evil result of our mistakes concerning 
the will of God. If Peter severed the ear 
of Malchus, Jesus made it clear to Peter 
and to Malchus and to all who knew of the 
matter thajt He surely disapproved of the 
disciple's act, that so far as he was con- 
cerned, he would, if possible, restore the 
severed ear. The follower of Jesus has 
much to do in undoing the teaching and 
example of those who have unintentionally 
misrepresented the Master. Act always 
on the motive of love, if you would always 
represent the Master. 



XXXII 
THE DEVILS IN THE SWINE 1 

There is a spirit of evil in the world as 
surely as there is a Holy Spirit here. It 
matters not how this spirit got here or 
what you call it. Its presence is manifest 
enough. It is perfectly certain that men 
are seen to be under its control and often 
absolutely against their will. While there 
is a great mystery about this evil spirit, 
yet there are some things concerning it that 
are very clear. 

First, it is always connected with error 

* Matt. 8 : 28-34. 

139 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

in the mind of the person possessed. The 
spirit of evil is the spirit of darkness, for 
the person held in bondage to error does 
not see it as such. He believes it to be 
true. That is the reason that it has such 
tremendous power upon his mind. But for 
his belief in it, it would be absolutely 
powerless to effect him. Take the case we 
are considering. This man is tormented by 
false beliefs. He believes that he is pos- 
sessed of legions of devils. He did not 
originate this belief. It had been taught 
him. How it originated, we do not know. 
But the fact is clear that the man believed 
it and therefore had all the torture of his 
faith that he was possessed of demons. 

Then he was tormented by his concep- 
tion of God, by the idea that he had been 
given into the hands of devils to be tor- 
tured. He had come to take the attitude 
toward himself that men had taken toward 
him and that he thought God held toward 
him. He expected no help from either God 
or man. When a man gets into that state of 
mind, his torture is complete, and there are 
multitudes of such persons in the world. 

Then this man was tormented by the 
thought that death would mean hell, that 
his torture after death would be greater 
than he was experiencing, great as that 

140 



TEUTHS THAT SAVE 

was. It is no wonder that with such ideas 
in mind the man was found by Jesus hid- 
ing away from men in the tombs, and long- 
ing, but fearing, to destroy himself. The 
wretched condition of this man may be 
wholly accounted for by the errors con- 
cerning God and man that filled and con- 
trolled his mind and from which he was 
utterly unable to escape since he surely be- 
lieved them. In a word, this man held 
views of God and man that necessarily in- 
volved his madness. How could a man re- 
main sane who believed that God would 
endlessly torture any of his sons in hell? 
If men would reveal their beliefs, we should 
understand their conduct. Then we should 
see what it is that controls them. Oh, the 
fearful effect upon men's lives of their 
false religious beliefs! 

Of course the man of our text was not 
possessed of evil spirits. He was simply 
possessed of false beliefs; but his beliefs, 
as I have said, had the same effect upon 
him as evil spirits would have had, since 
he believed that he was possessed by such 
spirits. They were nothing, but his faith 
in them made them real to him. 

What a wonderful change would be 
wrought in the mental and physical condi- 
tions of jnen if they were freed from all 

141 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

their false beliefs! What freedom the 
truth would make from the bondage that 
error creates ! Who can imagine the results 
if all of our errors were corrected, if all of 
the evils that have their existence solely in 
errors were taken away? It is a glorious 
fact that truth purifies the soul from the 
errors that create evils which bind men in 
miseries in the world. 

We need not concern ourselves with 
the miraculous element here. It is like the 
miraculous element in all the stories of 
Jesus. It simply mars the value of the 
story, hiding from most eyes its great 
spiritual and ethical significance. Let the 
swine alone. Never mind anything about 
them whatever. Fix your minds upon the 
great truth that God saves from evil by 
saving from error. Thank God we have 
daily evidence at Church House of the 
value of that method in our work of saving 
men from sin. 

Let me give a recent illustration, keep- 
ing very close to the facts in the case. 
There was a wild look in her poor coun- 
tenance as she told me that she had medi- 
tated suicide the night before. "But 
why," I asked; "what were you thinking 
about at the time f ' ' " Well, ' ' she said, ' < a 
woman had said to me, 'God must be 

142 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

against you or you would not be so unlucky 
as you are'; and another friend had 
added, 'It is the way you are made up, 
your disposition, that gets you into so 
much trouble.' Later, a friend of many 
years said, 'I can't help feeling that you 
would have succeeded in escaping much of 
the trouble that you have had with your 
drinking husband if you had understood 
him better and had been wiser in the 
methods you employed to restrain him.' " 

"When I was alone,' ' she said, "and 
thought of my unpaid rent and store bill 
and other things of a most depressing na- 
ture, I said, what they say is true ; God is 
not concerned for my welfare, neither are 
those who call themselves my friends, and 
then I could only think of one way out of 
it all, — death." 

"I have just been writing about a case 
like yours," I said, and then I told her the 
story of the Gadarene. 

"Yes," she said, "that is what I should 
have answered if you had asked my name, 
i A thousand devils.' " 

"Well, let me take them all away, as I 
am sure I can do in a few minutes. ' ' And 
I did, and I can now see her countenance 
so full of peace and joy after the great 
change had been wrought in her mind. How 

143 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

did I accomplish it? Very easily. "Here," 
I said, "take this for your rent and this 
for your other immediate necessities ; now, 
don't thank me; thank God whose spirit 
of love inspired me to give you the money 
generously contributed by others. And, 
now, let me tell you a little about him who 
seems to be hard upon you. The reason 
that he has seemed so has been solely be- 
cause he has not had opportunity to mani- 
fest his own loving self to you. It is his 
spirit in me that ministers to you, and he 
wants you to understand that you can al- 
ways feel sure of a measure of his love 
waiting for you in every time of need, here 
in Church House." 

"I shall not need so much to eat, now 
that I know I am cared for, ' ' she said. In 
a word, love and truth have full power on 
earth to cast out the devils of hate and 
error. Glorious truth ! 



xxxin 

THE PENALTY A MAN PAYS FOE 
BLINDNESS TO HIS FAULTS 1 

A man who is blind to his own faults 
exalts himself above others, with the re- 
buke 18: 11-14. 

144 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

suit of loss of fellowship with them, and 
not only with them but with God also. The 
text emphasizes this fact. The faults to 
which a man is blind expose him to the 
criticism and condemnation which he con- 
siders unjust. (Matt. 22 : 11.) 

"And when the King came in he saw 
there a man without the wedding gar- 
ment. ' ' Evidently this man did not realize 
his unclothed state, for he was speechless 
when the king said, "Friend, how earnest 
thou in hither not having the wedding gar- 
ment ?" And he went and gnashed his 
teeth when he was denied the feast and 
cast into outer darkness. It was because 
he was in darkness concerning his fault 
that he gnashed his teeth in rage at one 
whose attitude toward him his fault made 
necessary. 

Men hate one who seeks to correct in 
them faults to which they are blind. Chil- 
dren are not repentant when their parents 
punish them if they are blind to the faults 
for which they are punished. Men see 
neither justice nor wisdom in the prov- 
idence of God which is designed to purify 
them from evils concerning which they are 
ignorant. In a word, we gnash our teeth 
when we are punished by and for evils %o 
which we are blind, but we kiss the rod 

145 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

when we see that it comes to correct evils 
of which we are conscious, and from which 
we long to be free. 

We count it all joy when we fall into 
diverse temptations if we know that they 
are designed to reveal and to correct evils, 
recognized as such, in our hearts. 

If the chastenings of the Lord are to 
have their intended corrective effect upon 
us, we must realize our need of them. So 
long as we are blind to our soul's needs, we 
shall continue to misinterpret God's mer- 
ciful dealing with us. It is a mistake to 
say "not now, but in the coming years we 
shall read the meaning of our tears," for 
we need to read the meaning of our tears 
when they are in our eyes. We need to 
understand the necessity for the fiery trial 
while we are passing through it, if it is to 
have its designed purifying effect upon us. 

No chastening can be joyous except as 
we understand its purpose, because of our 
understanding of the evil in us that it is in- 
tended to correct. Look closely into your 
heart, therefore, with prayer for the light 
of God's spirit to aid you to discern what 
there is there that needs correction, so 
that, as the correcting experience comes to 
you, you may welcome it and not be em- 
bittered by it. 

146 



TEUTHS THAT SAVE 

XXXIV 
ROOTED AND GROUNDED IN LOVE 1 

By a double metaphor Paul tells us what 
love must be to us if we are to comprehend 
the height and depth, and length and 
breadth of the love of God. Love must be 
to us what a sure foundation is to a house, 
namely, it must underlie our entire life. 
It must not be a mere ornament of the 
building, but that part of it with which all 
other parts are connected. All other 
ground is sinking sand. No other founda- 
tion but holy universal love can be laid 
upon which to build a perfect character. 

And love must be to us what deep, rich 
soil is to the plant whose possibilities are 
to be developed. 

Only as the soul abides in such love does 
the soul experience the consciousness of 
God. The parable of the sower illustrates 
this. The seed that was not planted in the 
soil, but was caught away by the birds, 
utterly perished. This represents all those 
who are not rooting themselves in love, 
many of whom vainly imagine that with- 
out so doing they can hope to know the 
fullness of God. 

Then there is the seed rooted in the sur- 

»Eph. 3:17-19. 

147 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

face soil, which withered as soon as the sun 
beat upon it. The heat that would have 
developed it, if it had been deeply rooted, 
caused it to wither away, because it had 
little soil. What an illustration of the 
fruitlessness of the effort that a man 
makes who attempts to live the life of God 
without dwelling in His love. 

Then there is the seed more deeply 
rooted in soil in which tares also grew up 
with it and choked it, representing one 
whose heart is only partly set upon the 
things of God; one who seeks to unite the 
love of God with the love of that which is 
a contradiction to the will of God. Lastly 
we have the seed rooted in soil in which 
nothing else is permitted to grow. 

Rooted and growing in such love, the soul 
develops in all the graces of God, and at 
last knows all the fullness of the divine 
nature. 

"Rooted and grounded in love" — dwell 
on these words day after day until their 
deep meaning is fixed in your life. 
"Rooted and grounded in love" — fulfill 
this double metaphor, if you would realize 
a growing and perfecting vision of God. 

I know of no text in which the way to 
gain full fellowship with God is more 
clearly set forth. 

148 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 
XXXV 

WHAT DO YE MORE THAN 
OTHERS? 1 

" What do ye more than other s?" This 
is a soul-searching question. It must have 
startled the disciples of Jesus, who seemed 
not to have known that he would expect 
more from them than from others who 
were not his disciples. 

What should we, who are disciples of 
Jesus, do more than others? Jesus answers 
this question, "For if ye love them which 
love you what reward have ye? Do not 
even the publicans the same? And if ye 
salute your brethren only, what do ye more 
than others? Do not even the publicans 
so?" 

If when we are smitten on one cheek and 
we do not turn the other, if when we are 
required to go a mile we do not go another, 
if we are courteous only to those who are 
courteous to us, if we go no further than 
the practice of exact justice, what sign is 
there in us of any relationship to God such 
as Jesus manifested in his life on earth? 

This is the thing that we are to do more 
than others: "Love your enemies. Bless 
those that curse you and pray for them 

l Matt. 5 : 27. 

149 



TKUTHS THAT SAVE 

which despitefully use you and say all 
manner of evil against you falsely." In 
a single word, this love for our enemies is 
the one thing that we are to do which dis- 
tinguishes us as children of God. "Love 
your enemies that ye may be children of 
God." We are to think of them lovingly, 
speak of and to them lovingly, and our love 
for them is to find expression also in deeds 
as well as words. Jesus practiced this 
' i much-more-than-other s ' 9 teaching, and 
he expects us to do the same. Until we do, 
we shall not be able to escape from our own 
sins, nor can we contribute anything 
toward the work of taking away the sin 
in the world. It is by doing this one thing 
"more than others" that we are to fulfill 
our mission in correcting the evils of our 
humanity. 

"I want to love my enemy, and have 
prayed that I may do so, but thoughts of 
the wrong he has done me stand in the way. 
I can go so far as not to will him any 
harm, but to Wiink of him lovingly, I can- 
not do that. If he should confess his fault 
and do all in his power to make good the 
damage he has done me, my feelings 
toward him might change, but to love him 
until he does this is beyond my power, I 
have prayed for strength to fulfill the com- 

150 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

mandment of Jesus, but it has never 
come." "It will help you," I said, "to 
love your enemy, if you remember the 
worst thing you have ever done, and the 
best thing he has ever done. See yourself 
at your worst and see him at his best. I 
imagine you reverse this, with the result 
that you think of yourself as right and 
your enemy as wrong." 

I have recently had an experience of 
what I am teaching you. I had an enemy 
in one who was seeking to do me serious 
damage. He had already involved me in 
much pain, and my heart was becoming 
fixed in an attitude of bitterness toward 
him, from which I am sure I never should 
have escaped if I had not availed myself of 
the way I am now opening up to you. I 
fixed my mind on a real service which he 
did me and which I had forgotten. I spoke 
to him and to others of that service, with 
the result that my words of appreciation of 
the good thing he had done for me, moved 
him to render me fresh services of love, 
with the result, again, that my heart was 
filled with love toward him and the dis- 
agreeable thing was forgotten. Since then 
he has made me feel his deep repentance 
and has asked for an assurance of my 
forgiveness. 

151 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

If you are a husband and your wife has 
wronged you, call up memories of all her 
words and deeds of love. Set these over 
against the evil things. Tell her that you 
remember them with appreciation. Do this 
especially in connection with your thought 
of her, and you will experience a radical 
change of attitude toward her, which will 
bring to pass a change of her attitude 
toward you, which is likely to result in a 
reconciliation. 

In an hour when your friend wrongs you, 
remember all of his deeds and words of 
love, and the result will be that your love 
for him will remain unchanged. Do not 
forget to consider your own shortcomings 
when you think of his. Try my teaching, 
and see if it does not prove itself true. 



XXXVI 
THE MOTE AND THE BEAM 1 

Here is a text that I imagine has never 
had a chance to exert one half of its' power 
over us. I want to tell you what it has 
done for me in hope that you will use it 
for a like purpose. It is too valuable to 

» Matt. 7: l-o. 

152 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

be wasted. It can help you in a time of 
need when other helps fail. It has in it 
the power of God unto the salvation of 
every one who obeys it. And it does its 
mind-changing work rapidly. Under its 
power I have seen a soul released in a half 
hour's time from an evil mental state in 
which it seemed to be absolutely impris- 
oned. 

" Judge not that ye be not judged, for 
with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be 
judged.' ' If we judge unjustly, we shall 
be unjustly judged. If we judge without 
mercy, without mercy we shall be judged. 
Therefore, before we judge another, we 
should judge ourselves. If we do this it 
will make a world of difference in our judg- 
ment of others. Before you judge any- 
thing in any one, be sure and judge your- 
self concerning the same thing. See the 
change wrought in the Pharisees in their 
attitude toward the woman whom they 
were ready to condemn to death as long as 
they were unmindful of their own sins. 
What a change in their attitude toward her 
was caused by their vision of their own 
sins. They could not continue to condemn 
her after their attention had been fixed 
upon their own forgotten sins. 

Take the same attitude toward others 

153 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

who have your fault that you want others 
to take toward you. How sensitive you are 
about your own faults. How you hate to 
admit them to yourself, much less confess 
them to others! Remember that others 
feel the same way about their faults as you 
do about yours. 

I am afraid that you will not practice 
what I am teaching; that you will not con- 
sider your own fault before you consider 
the faults of others ; that you will not ad- 
mit your own faults before you ask them to 
admit their faults; that you will not con- 
demn and forsake your own faults before 
you ask them to condemn and forsake their 
faults. I am very much afraid that you 
may be Pharisaic in this matter of con- 
demning in others what you have over- 
looked in yourselves. Therefore, I entreat 
you not to pass my words by lightly, not 
to forget that they are given in interpreta- 
tion of the words of Jesus, and that they 
point out a solemn duty, which you cannot 
neglect without disastrous results. Your 
whole attitude toward others will become 
helpful when you practice this teaching. 

If England and Germany were each to 
follow this rule of Jesus they would both 
be brought into such an humble and just 
state of mind as would make reconciliation 

154 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

and a permanent peace possible, but as 
long as they see only each other's faults, 
their attitude toward each other will be 
unjust. If each one of the warring nations 
should first consider its own faults, there 
would be nothing left in the way of estab- 
lishing harmonious relations between them 
all. For God seems to have so arranged it 
that the fault is never all on one side, 
making it necessary that one side should 
have to confess itself wholly at fault. 
What a blessed thing it is we are spared 
the necessity of humbling our enemy by the 
necessity of having to admit ourself partly 
at fault. It seems to me that the whole 
world would be redeemed if it should prac- 
tice the simple teaching of this single text. 



XXXVII 
THEIR WORKS DO FOLLOW THEM * 

" Blessed are the dead that die in the 
Lord ! Yea, saith the Spirit, they rest from 
their labors and their works do follow 
them. ' ' Whether the writer of these words 
intended them to mean what they do to me 
or not, I do not know. Neither does that 
matter. They suggest to me the very im- 

1 Rev. 14 : 13. 

155 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

portant thought that we are to leave be- 
hind us when we die, works in which we 
shall have pleasure or pain, works through 
which we shall bless or injure those who 
are affected by them. 

The best illustration of my thought is in 
the story of Dives and Lazarus, where the 
rich man realizes that he has left behind 
him in the world an example of evil, by 
which those dearest to him are most im- 
periled. "Send Lazarus to my five 
brothers that they come not to this place 
of torture, ' ' he prayed. ' 'If they follow my 
example they will share my misery. I can- 
not now warn them of their peril, as I now 
realize it. I cannot correct the example of 
selfishness which I have left behind me." 
That is a thing that a man cannot do after 
death. Whatever change may come to him 
then cannot in the least change the record 
of his life. He cannot correct his example. 
He has opportunity to do so up to the last 
conscious moment of his life, but that op- 
portunity goes forever when death comes. 

What joy men have after death as they 
realize that they corrected their evil exam- 
ples before they died, so that whoever re- 
members their sin remembers also that 
they repented of it. 

I entreat you all to do what Dives 

156 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

neglected to do, for it must be a very sad 
thing for a man to realize that he has left 
a record of evil in the world, by which his 
evil influence is being perpetuated. I can- 
not think of a sadder experience than that 
— for a mother to see her children led 
astray by her evil example, while she is not 
able to correct it. Don't take the chances 
of such an experience. Correct your rec- 
ord at once. Confess your fault wherever 
it is known, that its evil influence may be 
arrested; and multiply good works, in 
memory of which you shall have pleasure, 
both in this world and in the world to come, 
as you see the good that your works do, 
especially to those who love you most and 
who therefore take them as their example. 



XXXVIII 
OUR FAULTS OUR BURDENS 1 

The Apostle is right in connecting our 
faults and our burdens ; for our faults are 
our burdens. They, more than our dis- 
eases, or our poverty, weigh our spirits 
down. The more we long to be perfect, the 
more our faults burden us and not only us, 
but those who love us. How the faults of 

i Gal. 6:1-2. 

157 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

their children burden parents and how the 
faults of husbands and wives and others 
living in close social relationships burden 
one another! 

The more we love those with whom we 
are associated, the more we suffer on ac- 
count of our faults and theirs as these 
faults disturb the harmony and joy of our 
relationships. When we overtake men in 
their faults, what should be our attitude 
toward them? In that hour we must con- 
sider ourselves lest we be tempted, for we 
are never more severely tempted than 
when we overtake others in their faults, If 
they are our friends and we love them, we 
are tempted to make light of their faults. 
If they are our enemies, we exaggerate 
their faults. 

It is an extremely difficult thing for a 
man to take a just attitude toward any one 
whom he has overtaken in a fault. The 
Apostle clearly indicates the one purpose 
that is to determine all that we do and say 
toward those whose faults we have come 
to see. "Restore such an one.' ' That must 
be our attitude, determining our every 
method. 

Two incidents from the life of Jesus will 
sufficiently illustrate this subject. When 
he overtook the woman taken in sin, his 

158 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

attitude toward her was determined by his 
purpose to restore her to the life of purity 
from which she had fallen ; while the atti- 
tude of the Pharisees was one of utter con- 
demnation. The other illustration is in the 
case of the tree overtaken in the fault of 
f ruitlessness. ' ' Cut it down ! Why cumber- 
eth it the ground?" men said who had no 
thought of recovery for the fruitless tree. 
"Dig around it, enrich the soil," he said, 
whose one thought was to restore the fruit- 
less tree. 

No matter what a man's fault may be, 
or however hopeless his recovery from it 
may seem when we overtake him in it, we 
are to have hope of his recovery from it, 
and are to use every possible means to 
attain that end. 



XXXIX 

HELPFUL MEMORIES 1 

"Do this in memory of me." "Lo ! I am 
with you alway, even unto the end of the 
world." I do not know all that Jesus 
meant by these words, but I do know what 
they suggest to me. I seem to hear Jesus 
saying to his disciples, "You will need to 

1 Luke 22: 19; Matt. 28:20. 

159 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

do something to keep yourselves from for- 
getting me. You say that will never be 
possible, that I mean so much to you that 
I shall ever be in your thought, but memo- 
ries fade and after I have been away from 
you in the world beyond death for a time, 
you will forget me unless you do something 
by which to remember me. ' ' The disciples 
might have said, "But have you not said 
that you will be with us in Spirit, as one 
alive after death V " Nevertheless,' ' 
Jesus said, "you will not so realize my 
presence as to abide under my influence 
unless after my death you do something 
in memory of me ; it is only as you keep in 
memory of me that you can hope to remain 
under the influence of my Spirit. I will be 
with you to the end of the world if you 
continue to do this thing that shall keep 
memory of me fresh before your minds." 
What is true of Jesus is true of all other 
departed ones, under whose gracious in- 
fluence we wish to linger. "Would God," 
we say, "they were still with us in the 
flesh, for we do so need the help that came 
to us from association with them when they 
were here. ' ' It seems cruel that they have 
been taken away from us, but they are still 
with us, and we may have the certainty of 
their influence upon us, if we will but do 

160 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

something that shall keep us in fresh re- 
membrance of them. It is only through 
such remembrance of them that they can 
continue with us, exerting their influence 
over us as in the days when they were in 
the flesh. 

My own mother had largely died out of 
my life, with the sad result of loss of her 
holy influence upon me, when, in remem- 
brance of her I placed her picture over my 
desk, and set aside a part of my prayer 
hour for thought of her, and now she is 
alive from the dead to me. I am under her 
influence as in the days gone by. I do not 
hear her audible voice, but I do hear the 
still small voice in my soul. 

" Spend a little time in thought of your 
mother," I said to a poor distressed soul 
who could not pray to an unseen God. ' i Do 
something every day that shall remind you 
of her sufficiently to bring you under her in- 
fluence again and you will be mightily 
helped in your struggle to become like 
her." 

How rich is the experience of helpfulness 
that comes to me as I read something, or 
remember something, that brings me in 
contact with such men as Frederick W. 
Robertson, Bishop McVicker, Bishop 
Brooks, and other great souls who have 

161 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

lived in the world and left a record full 
of inspiration for those who come in con- 
tact with them through memory of their 
words and deeds. Because of our failure 
to remember loved ones we are suffering 
fearful loss of a love that might still be 
ours. 

There is also hope for you, men and 
women, whose memory of mothers, or 
fathers, or wife, or children, is not such 
as to strengthen your souls; for whoever 
has done the will of God, which is the will 
of love, and left a record of his deeds in 
the world, may be your mother or father. 
You can fill your heart with their thoughts, 
though they were not related to you, even 
though you may never have seen them in 
the flesh and so come under their influence. 
It seems to me that many persons con- 
sumed of thirst for love are passing these 
nearby wells and going out into the desert 
where they search in vain for water. 



XL 

FAITH IN GOD TRIUMPHANT OVER 
EVERY POSSIBLE DIFFICULTY 

I want to tell you of three men in whom 
we see faith in God triumphant over every 

162 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

difficulty. It mightily helps us to know 
that these men were able to maintain their 
faith in a righteous God under circum- 
stances that tested it to the quick. It will 
hever be harder for us to keep our faith in 
God than it was for them to keep their 
faith in Him. 

There is the case of Job, whose faith in 
God was tested first by his loss of all the 
property which he had honestly acquired. 
First men robbed Job of a part of his prop- 
erty and then nature destroyed the rest. 
When the loss came through men it did not 
tempt Job to doubt the justice of God, but 
when his property was destroyed by na- 
ture, God seemed unjust. But Job's faith 
did not waver. Then followed the loss of 
all Job's children, overwhelming Job with 
keenest grief. Their death seemed cruelly 
unjust. It was impossible that the blame 
should be placed on them, or on any other 
human being, since their death was caused 
by a tempest which overthrew the house 
where they were. But though God had 
taken all of his children, still Job blessed 
Him. 

And then Job's health was taken; he was 
smitten with a most loathsome disease. 
But though his life had thus been made a 
burden to him, still Job's faith in God re- 

163 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

mained unshaken. Last of all, his wife 
tempted Job to give up his effort to har- 
monize his unjust and cruel experiences 
with his faith in the justice and love of 
God. "The thing cannot be done," she 
said. 

A God who would permit one of his most 
faithful children, one who was upright 
above all others, to be robbed of property, 
children and health, leaving him in a state 
of torture of body and mind, while he per- 
mits the worst of men to retain their prop- 
erty, children and health, is a God who is 
unworthy of reverence or love. "Curse 
him!" Job's wife said. 

Others attempted to justify God's deal- 
ings on the ground that Job must have 
been guilty of secret sins deserving such 
punishment as had come upon him. Job 
knew that his sins did not explain his losses 
and sorrows. He saw no way of justifying 
God's dealings. He could not understand 
how a good God could permit such unjust 
things to happen to him. But without such 
knowledge he maintained his trust in God, 
believing that ultimately God could and 
would make the matter plain to His 
servant. 

Notice some things which enabled Job to 
say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust 

164 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

Him." First he knew that it would mean 
death to curse God. It is a fact that life is 
not worth living to the godless men. He 
may have all else without faith in a loving 
God; but without God he is without life. 
Curse God and you die. 

"The destruction of this sublime con- 
ception," said John Fiske, speaking of 
faith in God, "would be like depriving a 
planet of atmosphere ; it would leave noth- 
ing but a moral desert as cold and dead as 
the savage surface of the moon. 9 9 

"Are force and matter all? The rest a 
dream?" asks Henry Van Dyke. "The 
world in which we live and move is mean- 
ingless; no Spirit here to answer to our 
own ; the stars without a guide ; the chance- 
born earth adrift in space. No captain on 
the ship; nothing in all the universe to 
prove eternal wisdom and eternal love. 
And man, the latest accident of time, who 
thinks he loves and longs to understand; 
who vainly suffers and in vain is brave; 
who dupes his heart with immortality. 
Man (without God) is a living lie — a bitter 
jest upon himself, a conscious grain of 
sand, lost in a desert of unconsciousness, 
thirsting for God, and mocked by his own 
thirst." 

In the same strain F. W. Robertson 

165 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

wrote: "It is the one, almost the only- 
struggle of religious life to believe that 
God is love. In spite of all the seeming 
cruelties of this life ; in spite of the clouded 
mystery in which God has shrouded Him- 
self, in spite of pain and the stern aspect 
of human life, and the gathering of thicker 
darkness and more solemn silence round 
the soul as life goes on, simply to believe 
that God is love, and to hold fast to that, 
as a man holds on to a rock with a desper- 
ate grip when the driving waves sweep 
over him and take his breath away, I say 
that is the one fight of Christian life, com- 
pared with which all else is easy. When 
we are not sure of the heart of God, the 
heart sours and life itself drags on, a mere 
death in life." 

To know God is life eternal, to deny God 
or curse Him is death eternal. No doubt 
Job held on to his faith in God because he 
realized his desperate need of Him. 

Another thing helped Job to maintain 
his faith in God — l ' The Lord gave and the 
Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name 
of the Lord." Job put these two things 
together. When he thought of the one he 
thought of the other also. He did not over- 
look the bow in the cloud. He thought of 
what God had given in connection with 

166 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

thoughts of what He had taken. He gave 
the property, children and health, then He 
had taken away. "I should never have 
had them but for His goodness.' ' 

We are apt to forget the gifts of God 
when we think of our losses. It would 
greatly help us to maintain our faith in the 
justice and love of God if, when He is per- 
mitting us to have bitter experiences, we 
were to think of the evidences of his good- 
ness. For one look at the desert take a 
hundred looks at the garden. For one 
thought that pains, you may have a hun- 
dred thoughts that give pleasure. If there 
are things in nature that weaken your 
faith, there are many more that can 
strengthen it. Job was wise in remember- 
ing that God gave all the good things that 
He had taken away. 

And then another thing that helped Job 
to maintain his confidence in God was his 
faith that God would finally justify to him 
all of His dealings with him. "Though 
worms destroy my body, yet in my flesh 
shall I see God." The book of Job ends 
with the restoration of Job of all good 
things that God had permitted to be taken 
from him. If God gives and takes away 
we may be sure that it is only that he may 
restore what he has taken in some richer 

167 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

form or degree. One who believes this 
finds it easy to say, "The Lord gave and 
the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the 
name of the Lord. ' ' 



XLI 
LET GOD BE TRUE 1 

"Yea, let God be true, but every man a 
liar." 

"I have fought the fight, I have kept the 
faith,' 9 Paul said. The Apostle had had 
to fight to keep his faith in the love and 
justice of God. Like Job, the Apostle had 
suffered the loss of all those things upon 
which he had set his heart. "Of the Jews 
five times received I forty stripes, save one. 
Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I 
stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night 
and a day have I been in the deep ; in jour- 
neyings often, in perils of robbers, in 
perils from my countrymen, in perils from 
the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils 
in the wilderness, in perils among false 
brethren, in hunger and thirst, in fastings 
often, in cold and nakedness.' 9 And yet 
none of these afflictions disturbed Paul's 
faith in God, since he believed that they 

1 Rom. 3 : 4. 

168 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

were all needed to work out the loving pur- 
pose of God concerning him. "None of 
these things moved me." 

Like Job, Paul dwelt upon the good 
things which God had given him, and he 
believed that the future would make 
clear to him many of the providences of 
God, which he now saw as through a glass 
darkly. The one thing above all others 
that kept Paul's faith in God unshaken was 
the belief that God was in Jesus. He was 
persuaded that neither death nor life, nor 
things of the past, present or future would 
be able to separate him from the love of God 
in Jesus Christ. And the Apostle felt sure 
that the Spirit of God that was in Jesus was 
in him also. It was this personal experi- 
ence of God, that Paul shared with Jesus, 
that kept Paul's faith in the love and jus- 
tice of God from failing. 



XLII 

UNTO THY HANDS I COMMIT 
MY SPIRIT 

"Unto thy hands I commit my spirit.' ' 
Dying on a cross, suffering cruel torture 
most unjustly at the hands of men, Jesus 
seems to have felt for a moment that he 

169 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

was forsaken of God. But he quickly over- 
came this feeling and died with the words 
of the text upon his lips, "Unto thy hands 
I commit my spirit. ' ' I implicitly trust my 
father's justice and love in this hour when 
both are seemingly utterly contradicted. 
Though my experiences seem to be unwar- 
ranted they shall not weaken my trust in 
God. 

Jesus believed that all of nature 's cruel- 
ties, as well as all the cruelties of men, 
were permitted by God for a purpose of 
love; that not a sparrow fell without his 
notice, and that the very hairs of the heads 
of his children were all numbered. And 
Jesus was perfectly willing to suffer and to 
have others suffer all that was necessary 
in order that the evil of the world be taken 
away. When evil apparently triumphed, 
Jesus was not disturbed because he fully 
believed that all such triumphs must prove 
postponed victories for righteousness. He 
looked beyond the monetary triumphs of 
evil to its ultimate and eternal defeat. He 
knew that if men took from him anything 
which God had given to him, God would see 
to it that it was restored to him, and with 
wonderful interest. It was that Job-like 
assuredness that God's righteousness and 
love were at the heart of all things which 

170 



TRUTHS THAT SAVE 

enabled Jesus to maintain his faith in God 
and his love to the very end. 

"Though He slay me, yet will I trust 
Him. ,, "Let God be true but every man 
a liar." "Father, unto thy hands I com- 
mit my spirit." Let the faith of these 
words dwell in our hearts. 



171 



I III 

1 

IS If 



is 



iiwiL 

! Ill 



ill 



lii 



\m\m 



! mi mm' 

fill! 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS i 



I 

022 171 550 



